Frank Cottrell Boyce chooses 2012 Divine Poetry Competition Winners

“Chocolate is poetry for the mouth” says Frank Cottrell Boyce

Celebrated author and screenwriter Frank Cottrell Boyce joined Divine and Christian Aid to judge the tenth annual Divine Poetry Competition held in association with Christian Aid. And for the first time, this year’s competition was also open to Welsh language speakers, with Welsh children’s poet laureate Eurig Salisbury leading the judging panel. Entrants were invited to imagine owning their own chocolate shop – a theme which really got the creative juices flowing! Over 2,000 entries were received from budding poets aged seven to 70 and from Inverness to St Ives and Llanllyfni to Lowestoft. The winners will receive hampers full of Divine chocolate, book tokens, Divine t-shirts and Christian Aid hoodies, mugs and pens.

Divine and Christian Aid were delighted to have Frank Cottrell Boyce as judge for this year’s competition. Famous for his screenplays “Welcome to Sarajevo”, “A Cock and Bull Story”, “24 Hour Party People” and his Carnegie Medal-winning children’s novel “Millions” (turned into a film by Danny Boyle), Frank is currently working on the first official sequel to Ian Fleming’s Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. He joins a long line of acclaimed authors to have judged the Divine Poetry Competition including Anne Fine, Jacqueline Wilson and Anthony Horowitz.

This year’s competition asked poets to write on the theme of “My Chocolate Shop”. Videos of Frank reading out the winning poems can be viewed on Divine’s website. Frank was particularly enthusiastic about the quality of some of the poems he read on judging day, saying, “[There have been some] amazing poems and beautiful phrases that we’ve been reading here at Divine. We’ve got phrases like “fondant dreams” and “aroma of bliss” – fantastic.”

Frank added, “Chocolate is poetry for the mouth. And poetry is like chocolate for the brain – a treat with a rich, complicated flavour and a lovely long aftertaste. The best poetry comes from the biggest hearts and the best chocolate comes from the fairest trade.”

Frank has been a fan of Divine for many years saying, “It was a fantastic buzz to come down and do a competition with Divine Chocolate and Christian Aid. My family loves Divine Chocolate – we have a special moment late on a Sunday afternoon where we all sit down on the couch and have a bar of Divine together. Divine isn’t the sort of chocolate you just gobble up – it’s got a little bit of magic in it. It’s also fairly traded and has that little bit of love in it”.

The winner of the 7-11 age group is Georgia Darke from Salisbury Cathedral School in Wiltshire. Cleo Jones from RGS Junior School in Newcastle and Mia Reilly-Smythe from New Earswick Primary School in York were awarded joint second prizes. The winner of the 12-16 age group is Ruth O’Sullivan from St Edmund’s Catholic School in Portsmouth. Lucy Patterson from All Saints School in Stockton-on-Tees and Josie Lake also from St Edmund’s Catholic School were awarded joint second prizes. The winner of the 17-Adult category is Alan Clemo from Altrincham in Cheshire. Meg Burrows from Ipswich was awarded second prize.

The winners of the Welsh language competition are as follows: The winner of the 7-11 category is Alaw Edwards from Ysgol Gynradd Trefriw, Llanrwst. Rhys Tanat Morgan from Ysgol Rhydypennau, Ceredigion was awarded second prize. In the 12-16 category the winner is Gwynfor Dafydd from Ysgol Gyfun Llanhari, Pontyclun. Second prize went to Lowri Bellis from Ysgol Gyfun Gwynllyw, Pontypool.

Visit www.divinechocolate.com/poetry to view the winning poems.
    
Please contact Rosanna Mayhew on 0207 378 6550 or Rosanna@divinechocolate.com for more information.

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Editors’ Notes

• The Divine Poetry Competition has become a firm fixture in the calendar of hundreds of primary and secondary schools nationwide (and is equally popular with adults). It provides teachers with an opportunity to explore fair trade in class, and a theme that combines chocolate with the issues of fairer trading never fails to inspire wonderfully creative entries. 

• Divine Chocolate and Christian Aid have regularly worked in partnership ever since the charity supported the launch of Divine in 1998. Both share the aim to alleviate poverty in the developing world. Divine’s mission is to ensure a more equitable trading relationship with cocoa farmers in West Africa. Divine Chocolate is different because as well as paying the Fairtrade price for its cocoa, Divine is actually owned by the farmers themselves - 45,000 cocoa producers own 45% of the company.  Company ownership gives farmers a share of Divine’s profits and a stronger voice in the cocoa industry.

• Christian Aid is an overseas development agency working to challenge and change the systems which keep people poor. As a member of the Trade Justice Campaign Christian Aid aims to change the current trade rules and practices so that many more of the world’s poor can benefit from trade.  www.christianaid.org

• All Divine products carry the Fairtrade Mark. This is an independent guarantee certified by the Fairtrade Foundation that the ingredients are sourced under internationally agreed fair trade terms and conditions. These include a guaranteed, secure minimum price, an extra social premium payment for the farmers to invest in their own community programmes, long term trading contracts, decent health and safety conditions – all aimed at empowering farmers to make their own improvements to living standards and prospects for the future

• For award-winning educational resources that bring alive the world of cocoa and Fairtrade to tie in with Key Stage 2 and 3 visit www.papapaa.org for the latest multimedia pack and details on how to link to webcasts from Kuapa Kokoo schools in Ghana.