St David’s author Nicola Davies has joined the ranks of literary giants such as Carol Ann Duffy and Michael Rosen after receiving one of the UK’s lmost prestigious awards for published poetry.

This week Nicola was given the Highly Commended for the CLiPPA (CLPE Children’s Poetry Award) for her collection entitled ‘Choose Love’.

With stunning illustrations by Petr Horáček, 'Choose Love' provides an insight into the real-life experiences of refugees forced to leave their homes to face an unknown future.

Chair of the CLiPPA judges, illustrator, anthologist and former Children’s Laureate, Chris Riddell, said, ‘Choose Love is an immensely moving and passionate response to the refugee crisis that shows how relevant poetry for young people can be in addressing contemporary issues.”

Fellow judge poet Valerie Bloom describes it as ‘humane and uplifting – what poetry is for’.

Nicola Davies, who lives near St Davids, is the author of more than 80 books including picture books, non-fiction, fiction and poetry for children and adults. She has written widely on many subjects including environmental science, children’s rights, disability and grief.

The core of 'Choose Love' was written in 2018 as part of a project with the charity Refugee Trauma Initiative. With the permission of both individual refugees and aid workers, RTI shared with Nicola a number of true and poignant stories which were then used as the basis for short-form poems.

“I’ve always wanted to be able to put poet on my passport, and now I feel that I can,” she says.

“My aim with the collection is to do one of the things that poetry is really good at, which is getting right into people’s hearts and making a change there.’

The CLiPPA is the UK’s leading award for published poetry for children. Past winners include Carol Ann Duffy, John Agard, Jackie Kay and Michael Rosen.

The results were announced at the CLiPPA Poetry Show, live onstage at the Lyttleton stage of the National Theatre, Monday 10 July, before an audience 800-strong, including children from schools across the UK. The show was also livestreamed and watched by thousands more children in their classrooms.

CLPE is an independent UK charity working to raise the literacy achievement of children by putting quality children's literature at the heart of all learning. CLiPPA, the CLPE Children’s Poetry Award, was developed to ensure that children’s poetry has a recognised place within children’s literature.