LAUREN Delapenha and Jovanté Anderson were named joint winners of the Helen Zell: Young Writers Prize for Poetry at the inaugural celebration of World Poetry Day in Jamaica, yesterday.

The competition was organised by Poet Laureate of Jamaica Lorna Goodison, as part of her mandate to sure up and encourage the next generation of writers and poets in Jamaica.

The adjudicating panel, headed by Professor Edward Baugh, found it hard to separate Delapenha and Anderson, who both won over the other two shortlisted poets Khadijah Chin and Britney Gabbidon.

Speaking to the Jamaica Observer shortly after being announced in a ceremony at the Knutsford Court Hotel in St Andrew, Delapenha expressed delight about being chosen.

“It’s overwhelming and… truly an honour. The biggest part for me is to be able to build a community of Jamaican poets… so to meet such wonderful poets as Lorna Goodison, Mervyn Morris, Edward Baugh, but also to have met the other three contestants here… that to me is the best prize of all,” she said as she tried to process the moment.

It was her mother who told her about the competition and encouraged her to enter.

“She is the one who discovered the competition and encouraged me to apply and has been encouraging me with poetry for a long time now. So I want to tell her ‘Thank you so much for your persistence’. Poetry in Jamaica is blossoming and there is so much more for me personally to discover in it, and I am very excited to go on that journey not just alone but with all the poets here today,” she added.

For Anderson, this was his second poetry competition and he said he felt like a winner once he was shortlisted.

“I’m just so excited. Words are escaping me, but I guess I could just say it’s such an honour to have come this far. I only started writing about three years ago, so I really feel that I am on that journey to become a writer… It’s such an honour to get this kind of external validation. Makes you feel like you are doing something good.

“This is the second poetry competition that I have every entered, but nothing to this extent. This was very new territory for me and I just went in deciding that just entering is enough, building up the courage to put my work out there and if it goes any further, then I would be grateful. So when I shortlisted, that for me felt like a win and I didn’t know it could get any higher. So to actually win feels so good,” he said.

Goodison was also pleased with giving birth to this new initiative.

“For all the years I taught at the University of Michigan in the MFA programme, I always thought I would love somehow to be doing this in Jamaica and to be somehow sharing this with Jamaican writers. This Poet Laureate gig gave me the opportunity. I am just so happy, I cannot explain. I am proud that we put forward these young poets and they are as good as anybody certainly in that programme. The MFA programme at the University of Michigan has consistently ranked in the top two in the world — either first or second — and that is the level at which these young people are displaying their talent,” Goodison said.

Announced late last year, the competition reached out to Jamaican writers between 18 and 24 who were either living at home or abroad and each applicant was required to submit a portfolio of three to six poems.

Goodson praised the work of the applicants noting that they received a lot more submissions than was originally anticipated.

“Everybody’s voice is very distinctive. The voices are engaged with things that are very important. What I loved about it was that none of the work is located up on Blue Mountain peak, but very much located in the real world and are engaging with concern that are very important to daily life and yet don’t sacrifice the poetry.”

The winners each received a cash prize of US$1,000.