Platinum Jubilee Poetry Competition Entries

Thank you to everyone (from around the world) who sent in their poems for our Jubilee poetry competition.

Thank you also to our judges:

Author and Poet Rebecca Fearnley.
Newbury Storyteller and Poet, Steve Wallis (who commented on each entry below)
Emma Milne-White, Hungerford Bookshop

and to Hungerford Bookshop for donating voucher prizes.

Adult Entries

WINNER

Platinum Jubilee June 2022

Palaces and carriages
Corgis and dignitaries
Commonwealth and governments
And barbecues too.

Your life of being Queen
And the countries you have seen
Have made you truly special
And a role model true.

The World is changing fast
But we can’t live in the past
We admire your huge integrity
Your strength and your dignity.

And on this your special day
We raise a glass and say
GOD SAVE THE QUEEN

Olivia Simmonds, West Berkshire

Olivia Simmonds offers us a simple but sincere appreciation of Her Majesty, recognising the remarkable changes to her country and our society over 70 years, that she has nevertheless met with strength and dignity. Freely adapting a rhyme scheme as the poem picks up its pace, Olivia avoids ever sounding too ‘poety’ and concludes with a hearty traditional toast: God Save The Queen!

RUNNER UP

Could diamond with seventy faces, sought,

Secure a place on the historic throne?

A nation’s royal elegy is caught

In open hand of history and shown

To all- remote, indifferent audience

While to recumbent Queen sleep offers dreams.

A postman gathers mail- faces commence

Into a royal dream connecting seams

Of royal narrative, letters arrive

On doormats, bearing stamps with Queenly head.

She wakes to seventy gala, to revive

A sovereign synergy and she will read

Her own reflected face, the mirrored guise

Apparent in her subjects’ gilded eyes.

Barry Coleridge

Barry Coleridge’s entry takes some inspiration from his more famous namesake, a flight of fantasy that imagines the Queen dreaming of her 70 year reign while postal workers sort & deliver countless tiny portraits of her across her realm.

Her Majesty

A Foreseeing Princess of Her Father

King George VI, Elizabeth Alexandra Mary.

Start from a Green Lady: to access Her Throne,

To Queen to all divided Realms United

After Dark God day does its takeaway:

to a male brought her to life.

Hold On! Greeny is a Queen of Courage

– (…) and so then reach’d Her Silver Jubilee.

Alas, just Latin words “Annus Horribilis”:

Waving like an Ocean does a mess

Still a Queen, thy back then military servants

– got Her Golden Jubilee.

Mother and Sister gone to supernal

But then yet with Her Duke of Edinburgh

– Diamond Jubilee happen’d.

Contemporary, it is 2022

– A Forth Milestone: To honor Her,

Her onward courageous from February 6, 1953

To Her Platinum Jubilee (…) Wish another…

Fano Nirina Nantenaina, Madagascar

Fano Nirina Nantenaina manages to combine the highs & lows of 70 years in a succinct & stylish ‘Grand Tour’ through the Silver, Gold, Diamond & Platinum Jubilees.

A House on the Fields

The profile that soared in the war.
Those tailored suits were sewn
to never gather.
The fabric was made
perfect to measure.

Tones that once could sink a cabin
somewhere in the South Pacific,
announced the Queen’s nuptials
over sweet, crackling airwaves.

And even as we flew over the deep,
laughter chased love
and legend escaped the Lorelei.
We welcomed the eyes smiling through calmer waves
of drifting petals, lace and falling rice.

Inside, there is an open ceiling,
gilded and yet clear,
where the soft sunshine
still finds the dusty pages.

And through the window, the dancing aspens
are covered by glittering coins of gold.
Part of this treasure flutters over bees in bramble,
as a robin hides her cerulean nest eggs
between two eaves and a pipe.

She has seen the soaring kites,
and remains, forever, a mindful Icarus.
But this will always be the land
of changing skies and daffodils.

Here lies Pope’s humble path,
and Wilde’s last walk.
They wove for us a myriad of leaves
while the birches turned gently
from silver to grey.

The fox at twilight, alert and wary
in the vast, grassy field.
He’s under the spell of an invisible revolution
igniting the obsidian.

On this starry night,
there is the glow of burnished citrine, an embedded ruby,
and the enduring gleam of sapphire
all carving remarkable trails.

Amena Hassan, Virginia USA

Amena Hassan writes all the way from the USA, but must surely have some personal experience of the UK, so skilfully does she conjure images of soaring kites, foxes at twilight, bees in the brambles and robins in their nests.

Gold State coach, eight drawn by Windsor Greys.
Commencing Royal Mews, Westminster Bells.
Gathering pace towards the Mall.
At a glance, the Tiffany fountain.
Royal procession completion, returns to Buckingham Palace.

From Windsor to Sandringham, Balmoral beyond.
Everywhere she goes, goodwill flows.
Congruous, anticipation, families await to see her Majesty the Queen.
At other times, Royal car arrives at children’s playground, the Monarch steps onto their ground.

Duke of Edinburgh Award, helped so many through his scheme.
New skills applied, to reach the mountain summit, through the snow and ice.
Surely placed. A platinum Jubilee.

Royal Berkshire, fields and meadows roll graciously into the sky.
Tributaries, River Hart, Whitewater, Blackwater slip into Lodden.
Burbling, Influencing one another, Reflection as if in tribute.
River Lodden meanders, flows, effortlessy towards the Thames.
Displaying, tributing, beauty, basking summer heat.

Jewels are kept in Tower. This is reason for platinum Jubilee.
Jewels achievements taken root in their minds.
Rubies, Emeralds, diamonds, gold.
These jewels not in Stone. So many types and kinds.
Ductile Malleable, this is their reward.
Still many treasures, buried in the sands of British Isles.

Rivers rise at some point.
Jubilee excitement, precise, Indefatigable, cascading at this time of celebration.
A platinum Golden Jubilee.

Chris Milsom, Leicestershire

Chris Milsom eschews rhyme to weave together complementary images of rivers & riches, the tributaries of the Thames and the treasures in the Towers standing in for the people and potential of the United Kingdom.

With love to the Queen

For seventy years we do thank you
We’re so pleased to call you our Queen
Your service is simply the longest
This nation has ever seen.

We love your colourful dresses
We love the hats that you wear
You cheer us up and do guide us
We think of you in our prayer.

Its great that you love all the horses
We can see your passion for them
We know you also like corgis,
From them all your loving does stem.

Your armed forces they do respect you
For Queen and country they fight
We thank them too for their service
So that we can sleep well at night.

From family to the whole commonwealth
You have just so many hats
Loving wife to a great grandma
We forget not the importance of that.

And so we give thanks for your service
We pray that your life may be long
We honour you both in our writing
Of poetry or even a song.

Ginette Gibson, West Berkshire

Ginette Gibson offers us a love poem in the finest sense, set in jaunty quatrains, summing up the nation’s love for our Queen & Her Majesty’s love of her subjects at home & in the wider commonwealth, of her family and her husband, and of horses and corgis.

A young Princess Elizabeth, so serene and beautiful
Even before she was Queen, to her country she was dutiful

On 6th February 1952 she acceeded to the throne,
Now the longest reigning monarch, she’s made the monarchy her own

Then came the special event, that of her coronation
When to her subjects, she swore her dedication

A life of service and duty, she’s been a hardworking royal
To her country and commonwealth, she’s been devoted and loyal

During her long reign, she’s experienced highs and lows
But throughout it all, a great strength of character she always shows

Helping us through difficult times, with her words she does inspire
Always leading by example, she’s someone to be admired

2022 is a special year, when we’ll come together as a nation
To mark the Queen’s 70 years on the throne, a cause for great celebration

The first monarch to celebrate, a Platinumn Jubilee
A momentous and special occasion, that’ll go down in history

We send our congratulations, for the long reign she has seen
We thank her for her hard work, God Save our beloved Queen.

Becky Bishop

Becky Bishop’s rhyming couplets acknowledge Her Majesty’s life of ‘service and duty’ that was evident even before her coronation, and her ‘great strength of character’ through ‘highs and lows’.

Our Queen Elizabeth II

A young woman, a cape of ermine, a crown on her head, the orb in her hand,
the sceptre in her clasp, seated on the throne of this land.
Our Monarch, our Queen, our Majesty, our beacon,
our Elizabeth, (Lilibet)
Truly a lady for all seasons,
Too many to count for so many reasons.
A wife, a mother, a family to raise.
Living a life in the public gaze.
The sense of duty no one can contest.
Always thoughtful while doing her best.
for the people of the country who stand at her side
and Commonwealth countries spread far and wide.
The Duke as her counsel for so many years.
A nation that mourned him with falling tears.
A stalwart he was in our hearts to remain.
At the side of his wife his reputation did gain.
There are no words that express how we feel
for the great Lady we love, as our feelings are real.

Mr C Norman, Devon

Mr C. Norman, himself only a little older than the Queen’s reign, makes a powerful point about the Queen as a mother, obliged to raise her family while ‘living in the public gaze’