Today we look at the importance of the tree planted to mark the bicentenary of the death of the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley and the winner of the National Poetry Competition.

Bicentenary of Death of Shelley Marked with Tree Planting

The 200 year anniversary of the death of Percy Bysshe Shelley, the Horsham-born poet, has been marked with the official planting of a tree in his memory. The tree in question is a Chestnut tree, which was rather a symbolic tree in the poets life.

The tree has been planted at the Warnham Local Nature Reserve in the Shelley Wildlife Garden – the garden marks a site that is it believed was frequently visited by the poet himself.

According to historic documents, Shelley could often be found sitting under a particular chestnut tree that was located near the Millpond, and it is this particular spot that gave the poet much inspiration for his poetry.

The Wildlife Garden was set up to reflect the poet’s love of the natural environment, which was a feature in much of his work.

The planting of the tree was carried out on behalf of the Horsham District Council by their chairman and a number of other members of the council. They felt that a tree planted at the Nature Reserve was a particularly appropriate way in which they could commemorate the life of Shelley.

Youngest Winner Ever for National Poetry Competition

Eric Yip, a 19 year old, has been named as the youngest ever winner of the National Poetry Competition. The prize of £5000 has been awarded to Yip for his work Fricatives, which takes its inspiration from his own personal experiences and also politics.

Yip, who is studying Economics at the University of Cambridge, is the youngest winner of the prize ever. Originally from Hong Kong, the poem Fricatives is actually a play on language ideas as well as comments on rare, colonialism, migration, belonging and also the guilt of leaving the land of one’s birth.

Speaking about the prize, Eric Yip said that it has been a complete shock to be named as the winner. He feels that poetry is one of those arts that people get better at with age because they have not only had more experience of writing but also have gained more life experiences. He hopes that at 19 he has plenty more poetry writing experiences left in him.

All of the entries in the competition were read anonymously by the panel of judges, before they made their decision on the winner.

Fricatives is the term that is given to the type of consonant that is created due to the friction produced by breath in a narrow opening, this produces an air flow that is somewhat turbulent. This includes the sounds “th” and “f” as they might be used in “three” and “free.”

The poem has been very cleverly constructed by Yip and puts the reader clearly in the position of someone for whom English is a second language, as the poem is read the fricative letters become somewhat tangled and offer a different meaning that might be seen on the paper.

Yip says that his work, and desire to write poetry, was influenced by Ocean Vuong.

In addition to Eric Yip the competition named another nine different winners, one of whom was aged 92. All of the winning poems will be published on the Poetry Society website later this month.