We are delighted to share with you the cut-up poems selected by Dylan’s grand-daughter, Hannah Ellis, as part of this year’s Love the Words competition, part of International Dylan Thomas Day 2017.

The competition asked young people aged 7-25, anywhere in the world, to ‘cut up’ the first few paragraphs of Dylan’s Under Milk Wood and use these to create their own visual verse which were then shared on Twitter.

Cut-up poetry was a style invented by the surrealists and favoured, later on, by the beat poets, many of whom – Allen Ginsberg in particular – were fans of Dylan’s work.

We received entries from all over the UK, as well as the USA, and Hannah then selected her favourites which you can see here.

The Welsh language entries for Love the Words were selected by poet and rapper Rufus Mufasa, who was one of the judges of last year’s Dylan’s Great Poem competition.

For more about International Dylan Thomas Day, see http://www.literaturewales.org/our-projects/international-dylan-thomas-day/ The celebration is funded by Welsh Government and coordinated by Literature Wales. This competition was a collaboration between Literature Wales and Discover Dylan Thomas.com.

We are grateful to artist Lee R. Jones for the use of his beautiful illustrations in this project.

Finally, remember to take a look at the hashtags #DylanDay and #DyddDylan for more about the Day itself, and #LovetheWords to see the many wonderful poetry entries on Twitter.

A massive well done to everyone included here, and to everyone who took part in the competition!

G.L.D. (20)

Carter (14)
Ravensbourne School

Ruby (8)
Sully Primary School

Danylo Thomas-Ganchak (8)
Swansea

Eva (8th grade)
Atlanta

Lleu (7)