Fifteen-year-old Ellanya Sivasubramaniam from Reading, Berkshire has been named among the top winners of the distinguished Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award, the Tamil Guardian reports.
Her poem, The Girls Who Grow Antlers, was chosen as one of the Top 15 winning entries from an extraordinary 28,344 submissions spanning 135 countries — making the competition one of the most fiercely contested literary platforms for writers aged 11 to 17. The award is organised annually by The Poetry Society and supported by The Foyle Foundation.
Ellanya described the moment she received the news as “surreal” and deeply “affirming.”
“I’ll never forget getting the call on my way back from school — I was completely star-struck and could hardly believe it was real,” she recalled.
The winners were celebrated at a ceremony held recently at the British Library in London. As part of the prize, Ellanya will take part in an exclusive week-long residential writing course at The Hurst in Shropshire, where she will collaborate with other young poets and receive professional mentorship. Her poem will also be published in an anthology that will be distributed to schools and libraries across the UK next spring.
Now in its 27th year, the Foyle Young Poets Award continues to be a prestigious launchpad for emerging literary talent — with many past recipients later becoming acclaimed, published writers. This year’s submissions explored themes ranging from identity and language to politics, art, and belonging, with entries arriving from countries as diverse as Botswana, Fiji, Vietnam, Venezuela, and the UK.
By Reshni Shanya
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