What is Tower Poetry?

Tower Poetry exists to encourage and challenge everyone who reads or writes poetry. Funded by a generous bequest to Christ Church, University of Oxford, by the late Christopher Tower, the aims of Tower Poetry are clear: to stimulate an enjoyment and critical appreciation of poetry, particularly among young people in education, and to challenge people to write their own poetry. Creative writing should be a central element in literary education, and learning about writing poetry can help students to think about ways of reading poetry.

The Christopher Tower Poetry Prizes 2016

The winners of the 2016 Christopher Tower Poetry Competition, the UK’s most valuable prize for young poets, were announced at the prizegiving in Oxford on 20 April. At a lunchtime reception in Christ Church, Ashani Lewis, from The Tiffin Girls’ School, Surrey, was awarded the £3,000 first prize for her poem ‘Flowers From The Dark’.