An entry form she picked up in her local library led to a writing career which has just won a national title for an NHS worker from Sheffield.
Pamela Griffiths (58), wrote a poem about her home village of Loxley which was judged to be the winner out of many thousands of entries for the Local Poem Competition - one of the UK’s biggest annual free poetry contests.
As her prize, she collected £1,000 in a presentation at Sheffield Central Library.
“It was a great shock to win the competition,” said Pamela, a widowed mother of three. “I’ve been entering the Local Poem Competition every year since it started six years ago and it’s been my dream to win it.” Pamela only started writing when she saw a United Press entry form in her local library at Hillsborough. “My late husband Clive encouraged me to have a go and since then I’ve published my own book Expressions of Life and had poems published in many anthologies.”
“Pamela’s poem is a traditional rhyming verse and has all the qualities we look for in this competition,” said one of the judges, Peter Quinn of United Press. “The whole aim of the Local Poem Competition is to encourage more people to write poetry. It’s free to enter and we ask people to submit a poem about someone or something local. Poems which come from personal experience often have that special ring of authenticity. They’re about things which matter to us personally. In the competition, we encourage people not just to celebrate their environment, but to describe and define it. Previous winners have been about towers, a river, village life and local history. Pamela’s poem, Home Sweet Home In Loxley Valley sits alongside all the other annual winners as a very worthy prizewinner. It’s a beautiful evocation of the pastoral, natural beauty of this country.”
Born and bred in Sheffield, Pamela is a quality and development officer at the NHS Sheffield Community Equipment Loan Service. She lives with her partner Sandy Hoffman.
“I’ve only been writing poetry for a few years, but it’s become something very precious in my life and I would recommend it to anyone,” said Pamela.
You can read Pamela's winning poem below.
