LEEDS Peace poetry competition was launched by a group of like-minded people in 2003 as part of the broader Leeds Together For Peace festival.
The festival involved comunity and faith-based events across the city
The Peace Poetry competition has since become an event in its own right, involving the city's schools, universities, and individuals, attracting hundreds of entries not just from Leeds but from around Britain.
Guy Wilson, who arrived in Leeds as director of the Royal Armouries museum when it transferred from London, is now retired and is the guiding hand behind the annual competition, which is backed by the Yorkshire Evening Post and Education Leeds.
"In the beginning the Peace Poetry Competition was a very personal response to the call for events for the first Together for Peace festival in 2003," he said.
"Having organised poetry competitions down south before moving up with the Royal Armouries I offered to try to organise another one. I knew from past experience that one thing was essential to make this work – the support of a local newspaper. When the YEP said they would help I knew we were onto a winner.
"From the start the aims have been twofold: to encourage an involvement in peace issues through poetry; and to encourage people to participate in the creative and therapeutic activity of writing poetry, a pastime that seems often to be forgotten in busy modern world.
"And now into the sixth year of the competition I think we can say we've succeeded.
"We've had an interesting and challenging range of themes: Why Peace? in 2003; Making Peace Keeping Peace in 2004; The Colours of Peace in 2005; Can I See it Your Way, Can You See it My Way in 2006; No Peace Without Justice in 2007; and now, this year Picture Peace."
The competition has grown in both stature and size. The biggest entry came in 2005, in an outpouring of emotion following the London bombings.
"We've grown the competition from small beginnings to something that now attracts well over 500 entries each year and which in 2005 received 1,260 entries. And that is significant," said Mr Wilson. "For 2005 was the year of the bomb outrage in London that we know as 7/7. The competition certainly struck a chord that year both inside and outside of schools and both the quantity and quality of the entries that year reminded us all of how important poetry can be in dealing with the emotions of great and terrible and incom-prehen-sible events.
"That year proved to us that the competition's aims were important. And it reinforced the commitment of our major partner Education Leeds, too. That year they told us: 'In the context of the tragic and shocking events engagement in the Peace Poetry for young people in schools becomes more urgent.'
"As well as the YEP and Education Leeds and Together for Peace itself, who have been with us from the beginning, we now have continuing and active support from Trinity All Saints College, Horsforth, and Arts at Trinity, and have been assisted on special projects by Leeds Metropolitan University and the Royal Armouries.
"And as well as the commitment of our partners we have been extraordinarily fortunate to have found a number of generous sponsors who have helped to get and keep the competition going and I should like to place on record our grateful thanks to the Harewood Charitable Settlement; the Leeds Philosophical and Literary Society; and the Scurrah Wainwright Trust.
"Of course, we've had our failures and our near disasters. Far more importantly, we've had great successes. Chief of these is the way that Leeds schools, especially the primary schools, have taken to the competition.
"But fundamentally, you know it's important when you see the look in the eyes of the shortlisted and winning poets of all ages at the annual awards ceremony."
l The competition is open until October 24 and entries should be sent to Nicola Megson, Deputy Editor, Yorkshire Evening Post, Wellington Street, Leeds LS1 1RF. Finalists will be invited to a celebration of poetry in Leeds on December 4 in Leeds Civic Hall. Winning poems will be published in the YEP.
peter.lazenby @ypn.co.uk