Announcing our CLiPPA 2024 Judges!

We are excited to reveal that award-winning poet Liz Berry will chair the 2024 CLiPPA judging panel. She is joined by teacher and writer Darren Chetty, Billie Manning of the Poetry Society, Imogen Maund, teacher and UKLA representative, and Laura Mucha, who was shortlisted for the CLiPPA in 2022.

Registration for this year's CLiPPA Shadowing Scheme is now open!
Schools can now register to take part in our much loved CLiPPA Shadowing Scheme. The scheme will begin on the 8th May, alongside a live virtual announcement of this year's CLiPPA shortlisted collections. Winning schools will be invited to perform live at the award ceremony in July. 

Find out more and register your school for this year's CLiPPA Shadowing Scheme.

About this year's judging panel

Chair of Judges – Liz Berry
Liz Berry is an award-winning poet and author of the critically acclaimed collections Black Country (Chatto, 2014); The Republic of Motherhood (Chatto, 2018); The Dereliction (Hercules Editions, 2021) and, most recently, The Home Child (Chatto, 2023), a novel in verse. Liz’s work, described as “a sooty soaring hymn to her native West Midlands” (Guardian), celebrates the landscape, history and dialect of the region. Liz has received the Somerset Maugham Award, Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize and Forward Prizes. Her poem ‘Homing’, a love poem for the language of the Black Country, is part of the GCSE English syllabus.

Liz Berry says, "As a teacher, parent and a poet, I love reading and sharing poems with younger people and seeing that magic happen. I'm delighted to be chairing the CLiPPA this year (honestly, what poetry job could be more joyful?) and discovering the books which will be enchanting the next generation of dreamers."

Laura Mucha
Laura is an ex-lawyer turned award-winning poet and Author-in-Residence in the Department of Public Health & Primary Care, University of Cambridge. Her writing has won multiple international awards and been featured on TV, radio and public transport, as well as in hospitals, hospices, prisons, books, magazines and newspapers around the world. The collection Being Me, which she co-authored with Liz Brownlee and Matt Goodfellow, was shortlisted for the CLiPPA in 2022.

When not writing, she spends her time visiting schools around the world and working with organisations such as the Royal Society of Medicine, National Literacy Trust and UNICEF to try to improve the lives of children.

Darren Chetty
Darren Chetty teaches at University College London, and taught in primary schools for over twenty years.  He contributed to the best-selling book The Good Immigrant (Unbound). He writes, with Karen Sands O’Connor, a regular column for Books for Keeps examining racially minoritised characters in children’s literature, entitled 'Beyond the Secret Garden'. A book based on the column will be published by the English Media Centre in 2024. Darren co-authored, with Jeffrey Boakye, What Is Masculinity? Why Does It Matter? And Other Big Questions (Wayland). He contributed to The Mab, a contemporary retelling of the Mabinogi tales for children (Unbound).

Darren has provided training for the Carnegie Kate Greenaway judges and advises on the CLPE Reflecting Realities research and Penguin / Runnymede Trust Lit in Colour project. He has previously judged the Blue Peter, YA, and Little Rebels book awards.

Billie Manning
Billie Manning works for The Poetry Society’s education team as Learning and Participation Coordinator. She is a poet and former primary school teacher, and teaches beginners’ poetry courses. She was a Barbican Young Poet 2020. She’s passionate about early reading for pleasure, and her favoured World Book Day outfit is the bear from Jon Klassen’s I Want My Hat Back.

Imogen Maund
Imogen Maund is an English Lead and Year 6 teacher at Caldecott Primary School in Abingdon and is a Regional Representative for The UKLA. She leads an OU/UKLA Teachers Reading Group and enjoys connecting with local teachers who are also ambitious about inspiring all children to be readers.

For the last couple of years, Imogen has been a judge at the longlisting stage of The UKLA Book Awards and regularly reviews for Just Imagine. She is passionate about reading for pleasure, poetry and picture books.