Follow Amelie's journey as Young Poet Laureate in her blog

I’m ecstatic about everything the year ahead as Worcestershire's Young Poet Laureate has in store for me and hope to write as much as I can and grasp anything that comes my way but I also hope to blur the lines between scientific and poetic disciplines and get even more young people writing (and reading) poetry.

I’ve written poetry for quite a while. I still have a fair amount of my embarrassing poems written back in 2014 (in some of the ugliest fonts ever seen). Fortunately, I’ve graduated from writing about foxes in domino masks and neighbours I thought were rude. In the past few years I’ve been reading a lot more poetry and, as a natural consequence of that, writing a lot more poetry.

I don’t study English - I do study further maths though! As well as physics and chemistry. Often people say this seems contradictory - I don’t think so. Both maths and poetry are at their core about patterns. They’re about a very human desire to understand, define and catalogue. They’re both tools for unpacking ideas just in different ways.

I really agonised about submitting to the Worcestershire Young Poet laureate program - I’ve got quite a lot of imposter syndrome going on! My winning poem “Spacetime is shaped like a railway track” went through six different very distinct revisions loosely about the same theme and dozens upon dozens more revisions to try and get the final version right. I came very close to not submitting - sending my poem in about as late as possible.

I genuinely could not believe I had been shortlisted for the finals. Attending the online rehearsal felt like I was in a dream and I most certainly did not feel that I had woken up by the time I got to the in-person rehearsal! The sheer amount of talent surrounding me in that room was quite something to behold. Each young poet who got up there did an incredible job. It was stunning how well each person held the room and how outstandingly written everyone’s work was.

Performing was brilliant - I loved every second of watching the crowd take in what I was saying but the best parts of the day all took place backstage. There were so many clever, articulate and caring young people in that room who I am truly lucky to have met. So you can imagine my shock when I’m looking around after all the performances had finished - at least four names in my head for people I thought were the strongest - and my name gets called out! I think my shock was pretty apparent in my faltering performance that followed (although I hoped my bit of audience participation distracted from that).

I still can’t quite believe it. It’s already been a life-altering opportunity. It’s completely changed my perception of my own writing and all the possibilities available to me.

Learn more about the Young Poet Laureate 2023 competition and read Amelie's winning poems

Read Amelie's blog to find out more about her time as Young Poet Laureate