The illustrated poems need to be in portrait format and no longer than one sheet for A4 paper or in an equivalent digital format. The Council is accepting entries until 12:00pm on Friday 21 April. This poem reflects Betjeman’s fondness for his stuffed toy, and helps to explain why Betjeman became, for Britain, ‘the nation’s teddy bear’. Archibald, and Betjeman’s toy elephant Jumbo, were in his arms when he died in 1984. Please note that entries will not be returned, therefore, make a copy if you wish to retain a copy. Writing for NATE, Lesley Nelson-Addy, Furzeen Ahmed and Harmeet Matharu call for a diversification of poetry in the English curriculum, including consideration of such collections as Daljit Nagra’s British Museum in which Nagra considers his identity as a British Asian and how institutions such as the British Museum and the BBC have guided him on his journey to understanding his culture. As Nelson-Addy, Ahmed and Matharu suggest, in considering the anthology, The Professor of Creative Writing was honoured to be asked to write the poem by BBC1 and the Palace on behalf of the Royal Society of Literature, of which he is the Chair.

He thought there was a message to be learned “about taking things easy and being patient and trusting the Earth and maybe having to come through this slightly slower, and wiser, at the other end – given that one thing that’s accelerated the problem is our hectic lives and our proximities and the frantic ways we go about things”.At all times, East Cambridgeshire District Council reserves the right in the event of circumstances arising outside of its control to cancel or change the competition at any stage.

I had what must have been one of the best seats in the Abbey. I was at the west of the South Transept sitting among many distinguished admirals, the least decorated and the least important person within sight. I could see the Throne itself on the “theatre” which is a golden carpeted space at the crossing of the Transepts. The Throne is a gilded chair upholstered in pink silk, almost like the kind of thing you see in the drawing room of an Irish Roman Catholic prelate. A man touches the boundary stone in Eyam from which no resident could pass during the village’s isolation in 1666. Photograph: Gary Calton/The ObserverThe poem needs to be in portrait format, but should be no longer than one side of A4 paper or in an equivalent digital format. The Coronation has already inspired the production of resources for schools, freely available for teachers. The British Coronation Project, a collaboration between King's College London, University of Roehampton and Arts Projects for Schools offers a curriculum-based scheme of work for primary aged children while The Eden Project’s Coronation Big Lunch includes a range of arts and teaching resources to commemorate the occasion. The Royal Collection Trust has produced materials for schools and also offers opportunities to visit the official royal residences throughout the year and for school groups to experience Coronation-themed workshops. This short poem was written late in Betjeman’s life and reflects the mixture of tender melancholy and humour that pervade his other work, though there is a deeper awareness of death and (like his friend Philip Larkin) a terror of dying lurking behind the poem.