CLiPPA 2022 poetry award Shadowing Scheme opens

CLPE announces the judges for this year's CLiPPA children's poetry award, and invites schools to take part in the poetry award Shadowing Scheme.

The judges for this year's CLiPPA include poet and former professor of creative writing at the University of South Wales Philip Gross, who will chair the 2022 judging panel. He is joined by fellow poets Nikita Gill and John Lyons, and Becky Swain, director of the new Manchester Poetry Library at Manchester Metropolitan University, as well as Charlotte Hacking, learning and programme director at CLPE.

Philip Gross said, "Poetry for children and young people is stretching its limbs in all directions - up and down the age range, on to the borders of the novel, biography, science or song, outwards into live performance and inwards to the thoughts and feelings you've never had words for before. So many different ways of being excellent… I'm looking forward to chairing the judges as they go through the submissions, hunting for poems that will prompt that gasp from young readers, 'I never knew poetry could do that for me…' and 'I didn't know you could do that with poetry. Let me have a go!'"

Key Dates

The CLiPPA shortlist will be announced live at Manchester Poetry Library on Wednesday 4 May, at the first of a series of live CLiPPA events. Further celebrations will take place at The Globe on 20 June, as part of the Poetry By Heart competition finals, with a very special CLiPPA Poetry Show planned for the announcement of the winner on 8 July 2022. 

CLiPPA Shadowing Scheme opens

The CLiPPA Shadowing Scheme supports schools and teachers to develop a love of poetry. Once the shortlist has been announced in May, teachers are invited to choose one of the shortlisted collections and share them with pupils. CLPE will provide dedicated teaching sequences for each collection, including videos of poets performing their work.

Children can choose a favourite poem from one of the shortlisted collections to work up into performance, which is recorded and sent to a CLPE judging panel. Winning schools are then invited to perform live at the award ceremony. Registration for the 2022 CLiPPA Shadowing is now open, and you can find out more at the CLPE website.

Sonia Thompson, head teacher of St Matthew's CE Primary Teaching and Research School in Birmingham - which took part in the shadowing scheme last year, said, "The whole school benefits from the CLiPPA Shadowing. The discussion and sharing between teachers, classes and children creates a joy in poetry that is palpable. As far as I am concerned, all schools should take part, there is nothing to lose and everything to gain."

Louise Johns-Shepherd, chief executive of CLPE, has welcomed the return to "a full programme of live poetry events, and record numbers of children from across the country expected to take part in the Shadowing Scheme". She added, "The CLiPPA raises the status of children's poetry, introducing so many children to poets and poems they wouldn't otherwise meet and encouraging everyone to find joy and excitement in the reading and performing of poetry."

The CLiPPA (CLPE Children's Poetry Award) is an annual award for published poetry for children. Past winners include Carol Ann Duffy, John Agard and Jackie Kay; Michael Rosen won in 2021 with his collection On the Move Poems about Migration.