Johnny Dobbyn, one of Inside Croydon’s long-time contributors, has had one of his poems, Kill Switch, highly commended in the 2026 Daily Telegraph poetry competition.
Poet, innit: Johnny Dobbyn
Kill Switch was chosen among the best works from a record entry – more than 700 – all written on the set theme of “Mothers”.
The Telegraph announced the results yesterday, with the winning entry, While You Still Know Who I Am, by William Horsted, published in the newspaper and read in an online video by actor Sam West.
Dobbyn, who lives in Purley, works as a journalist. Last year he completed his 50th season of playing rugby, man and boy, for John Fisher School and, more recently, Purley-John Fisher. Dobbyn wrote about the tries and trials of coarse rugby for this website for several years, charting the slow decline of the game at grassroots level.
A frequent guest on the Croydon Insider podcast, Dobbyn has also written for this website about mental health programmes and domestic violence. His reporting of the Kulpa app, provided for the victims of abuse, helped to persuade the Metropolitan Police to trial its use by officers across London.
He has also been an enthusiastic participant in BYOB, a regular spoken poetry session these days staged each month at Boozepark.
So entering the Telegraph’s poetry competition seemed an obvious step for Dobbyn to take, and in the Royal Standard this week he declared himself “delighted” for his work to be recognised among the top dozen in the competition.
Kill Switch recounts the experience and emotions from a situation with which many sons and daughters will be familiar. “Hard to say, hard to read, harder to hear,” Dobbyn writes in one poignant line from a poignant poem.
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