A 15-year-old has been named one of the top 15 winners in a worldwide poetry competition.

Ernest Wakeford was recognised in the Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award 2024 for his poem "Tulips."

The competition, run by The Poetry Society, received more than 17,000 entries from more than 6,600 young poets from 113 countries.

Ernest, who attends Downlands Community School, Hassocks, writes about flowers, tangerines and the weather. His favourite poets are D. H. Lawrence and Sylvia Plath.

He said: "Winning the FYP Award has really given me confidence in my writing and I’m really pleased that the work I’ve put into my writing has paid off."

The competition, which is open to young people aged 11 to 17, is one of the leading writing competitions for young people.

The winning poems explore a wide range of subjects, from the beauty of the natural world to love, loss, and conflict.

The winners will receive a range of prizes to help develop their writing, including mentoring opportunities and a residential writing course at the Arvon Centre in Shropshire.

The top 15 poems will be published in a printed winners’ anthology in March 2025.

Judith Palmer, director of The Poetry Society, said: "It’s amazing to think that more than 17,000 new poems were written in 2024 by young writers eager to participate in the Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award.

"We’d like to thank every young person who took the courageous step of sharing their work, and hope that we’ll read more poems from them in future.

"It’s exciting to see so many young people turning to poetry to express themselves so eloquently.

"Huge congratulations to the hundred winners who captured the judges’ hearts from such a strong field.

"The Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award is a launch pad for the best of the world’s young poets, and the Award’s sheer scale and global reach demonstrates what a huge achievement it is to be selected as one of our winners."

Ernest Wakeford's 'Tulips':

Your numb, dry tongues,

pressed, hung in the air,

dull butter knives,

rubber eggs.

Thick-walled veins

suckle slow

in grey.

You're flattened,

empty like peeled oranges

and lying on the wind

thin and dumb as anything.