Divine Chocolate announce winners of National Poetry Competition 2016

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Divine Chocolate announce winners of National Poetry Competition 2016

‘And so love became a wilderness vast.
Fruit stripped, nibs crushed, her cocoa dark and
Warm and rich and smooth and soft and
Nestled, between paper and foil
And wrapped and packed all shiny and neat
And sent off for people to eat’

(Extract from Emily Zara Williamson’s poem “A Love That Grows”)

Divine Chocolate and Christian Aid are delighted to announce the winners of their 14th annual Divine Poetry Competition, which is open to children and adults across the UK. Children’s author of the bestselling ‘Roman Mysteries’ series Caroline Lawrence joined this year’s competition as guest judge to select the poems from the hundreds of entries which best captured the theme “A Love That Grows”.

The competition was divided into three age groups, and this year’s winners are:

7-11: Pablo Shenton-Pareja from The Royal Grammar School (Junior School) Newcastle

12-16: Emily Zara Williamson from The King’s School Canterbury

Adult: Penny McCulloch

The four runner’s up poems can be found on the Divine chocolate website.

This year’s theme of ‘A Love That Grows’ encouraged budding poets to take a voyage of discovery through the world of chocolate, learning about cocoa farmers and Fairtrade. The poems received showed a fantastic array of interpretations of a love for chocolate, a growing understanding of where chocolate comes from and the empowerment of farmers through Fairtrade.

The winners were chosen from nearly 1,000 entries, mostly from schools all over UK. You can watch the winning poems being read by Caroline Lawrence on Divine Chocolate’s YouTube channel.

Caroline Lawrence said “I love poems, I love words, I love the five senses… and I love chocolate, so when Divine Chocolate and Christian Aid invited me to judge their annual poetry competition I was really pleased, because I got to eat some chocolate and read some great poems about chocolate!”

Charlotte Borger, Communications Director at Divine Chocolate adds:  “This year’s theme explored the love we have for chocolate but also encouraged the entrants to think more deeply about the people behind the chocolate, the work that goes into it and the journey it goes on to reach us and its future. Unless cocoa farmers receive a sustainable level of income from the beans they produce, their children will not follow them into farming and we could face a shortage of chocolate in the future!”

Discover all the the winners and runners up on the Divine website or watch Caroline Lawrence reading the winning poems aloud.

Each of the winners received Divine chocolate hampers, Caroline Lawrence’s new book The Roman Quests: Escape from Rome, book tokens, Christian Aid camping mugs and fantastic gifts from Ethical Superstore.