Lilly Rigden, United Kingdom's National Honour, September 2026
Lilly Rigden wrote the highest-scoring poem from United Kingdom in the Writory International Poetry Contest, September 2026: A Changing Mind, scored 75 out of 100 by the blind judging panel across five published criteria. The poem was read in English (Latin script).
A Changing Mind
Forget the weight of the world, I couldn’t bear the weight of my mind A mind such as mine, that when turned inside is a sweet scented mist of serenading cyanide It’s a shower of artillery fire in hopes that I’d die it identified a threat and said it’d rip me to shreds we strapped it to a bed with drugs to quell it with rest To circumvent the dreadful things it said in my head we did this many times, expecting to re-exorcise A past spiritual enterprise? Or an existential threat’s demise to pull and prise apart my pride, unveil light that might propel my mind to wider skies, an astounding size, to breathe the cloud’s energetic ties holding memories of reality to lacerate the shrouds upholding systems and brutality I’d evaporate troubled waters, and precipitate some sanity but I’m not God, just a pea in his pod, besotted with humanity
Every country's leading poet each month is named on the September 2026 National Honours. The contest is open to poets in United Kingdom and everywhere else: enter the current round, and every poem receives a score out of 100 and a certificate.