Christopher Tower Poetry Prize 2011

The long listed winners for this year's Christopher Tower Poetry Prize were recently put up on the internet and I am among them! A link to read the poems [including mine, which is entitled Contrasts Between Watch and Stone (or William Paley)] is right here. I cordially invite you to have a little glance.

Also see amongst them my fellow Foylers; Catherine Olver, Sarah Lucas and Andrew Wynn Owen. I also particularly liked Elizabeth Crowdy's Simplicity. The first line, "Our home sang simple" was very catching and the uncomfortable, yet very exact image which followed, of floorboards bent as if with scoliosis, cinched the knot which pulled me into reading it carefully the whole way through. I liked this years winning poem quite a lot, especially the lines: "I am trying, slowly, to shut them down forever. /
They are all too filled with blistering flame.".

Ledbury Reading

Come see me and other Foyle Young Poets at this year's Ledbury Poetry Festival. I'll probably be around from Friday to Sunday. Here's the schedule: Readings. It's going to be brilliant, I promise.

'to the universe' by Ameerah Arjanee

Ameerah Arjanee, who is one of the 14 poets that came on the Arvon course as a prize from the Foyle Young Poet's award is releasing a book of her poetry called 'to the universe' soon. This doesn't surprise me one bit because she is fantastically prolific as well as being a great poet. She must have a very talkative muse, or something, I don't know. I came with six poems to the retreat, all folded into little squares and an empty notebook, and she had this massive stack of them. It was quite daunting. Anyway, I will update this when her launch event at Institut français de Maurice in Marituis (why, oh why, is it so far) happens, and also I will probably order it. So, that's cool. She's a poet to watch out for.

Foyle Young Poets

{Merlin the horse at the Arvon Centre}

Winning the Foyle Young Poets of the Year award for 2011 was probably one of the biggest achievements of my life so far. The honour was much more about the people that I met as a result than about recognition or success, though. Leaving aside the sheer brilliance of Luke Kennard and Jane Draycott as teachers to us and poets in their own right, the other winners who came along for the Arvon Foundation course were the kind of amazing people that make you constantly doubt yourself while internally promising to write better and better and better poems. (I mean that in a good way, obviously.) Also, we danced the Macarena together. And, also, you have never seen fridge-magnent-poetry like Arvon Centre poetry.

{a fridge poem - collectively authored}

Read my winning poem (and also, everyone else's) here.