Poetry Space Competition 2015 – FULL RESULTS

I am pleased to announce the winners and commended poets in this year’s competition, selected by John Siddique. 

There were 322 entries and John read them all and send his thanks to everyone. Prizes of £250, £100 and £50 will go to the top three poets. All winners and commended poets will receive a copy of the prizewinners's anthology which will comprise the top 23 poems chosen by John.

The Winners:

1^st Prize : After the Storm. Ama Bolton (UK)

2^nd Prize: Weeding. Corin Greaves (UK)

3^rd Prize: I Know The Moon In All Her Phases. Victoria Gatehouse (UK)

Commended poems:

Ghosts. Susan Castillo (UK)

Storm Wren. Lizzie Ballagher (UK)

My Grandmother’s Angels. Victoria Gatehouse (UK)

Fingernails. Gail Dendy(South Africa)

The Challenge. Wendy Stern (UK)

Bramble Picking. David Mark Williams (UK)

Next Time I Will Smudge The Painted Sky. Jeanne Ellin (UK)

View From A High Window. Lizzie Ballagher (UK)

Struck. Helen Ford (UK)

Nocturnal. Joanne Key (UK)

Pieces of Suffering. Wendy Stern( UK)

Rainbow, Eleni Cay (UK)

Garden Birds. Gail Underwood (Cumbria, UK)

When I Think Of You. Michaela Ridgway (East Sussex, UK)

Flower Power. Sue Kindon (France)

I Never Trusted The Light Again. Beverley Ferguson (Bath, UK)

This Place. Eileen Harrison (The Netherlands)

In A Good Place. Pat Edwards (Wales, UK)

Early Morning Swim. Caroline Carver (Cornwall, UK)

Jesse Garon. Susan Castillo

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 Poetry Space will be publishing a prize-winners’ anthology  in the late Autumn.  In the meantime please scroll down to read the top three poems and find out a bit more about the poets.

Ist Prize

After the Storm

sunshine on late roses,

a queue of swallows on the wire,

the sky washed clean and spread to dry:

she finds his gloves in the hall-table drawer:

leather moulded to the curl of his palms.

The smell of him,

Left, right, she draws them on.

Key deep in one pocket, jar in the other,

she gathers boots, lead, walking stick.

The spaniel dances at the door.

On the hill the wind shakes leaves

and jackdaws out of the sycamores.

Her coat flaps flightless wings.

She climbs until the sea

rises into sight, a flake of silver.

The dog bounces through heather.

Clouds hurry into the east.

Her gloved hands unscrew the lid

and tilt the jar. The last of his dust

streams out on the wind.

Ama Bolton

  

Ama Bolton is a member of the Wells Fountain Poets. Her work has appeared in Magma, Obsessed with Pipework and Blithe Spirit and in several anthologies, and on-line at The Stare's Nest.
What can I say? I'm surprised, thrilled, sopra la luna! I wrote this poem while walking in the Quantocks on a windy autumn day, and am delighted that it has found a home with Poetry Space.

John’s report

This poem is poignant and truthful. I love the images in it, the key in the pocket, the flapping coat. As soon as I read this poem I knew it was a winner. This is a poem that will stay with me, for all the best reasons. I feel like I met the people in this poem, and its story is delivered with grace and love.

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2nd Prize

Weeding

i used to feed the weeds
in our garden as a child
never understanding
the difference between
one petal and another
–
for the same reason
i picked her bony stem
and if we were ever to marry
i would lay fistful, upon fistful
of dandelions at the altar
and weeds would have their day

Corin Greaves

Corin is currently studying History and Philosophy at Bath Spa University. Once she graduates she hopes to teach. She has always had a passion for poetry, particularly the work of e e cummings and Anne Sexton, but only recently started seeing her own poems through to completion. Interested in writing intimate and honest poetry, this is the first poem Corin has shared and entered into a competition.

I am absolutely over the moon, especially because I don’t usually consider my poems worth finishing, let alone sharing. This has been a great confidence boost and I definitely intend to write more!

John’s report

I love simple clear writing, and I love humanity. This poem is full of both, as well as innocence, vulnerability and hope.; the things that are actually the real strengths of being human.  This poem made me dance with joy.

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3^rd Prize

 I Know The Moon In All Her Phases

i Biopsy

Tonight, there’s a dressing taped to my breast.

I draw curtains and she’s there, scalpel-thin

behind glass, the shadowed part invisible

to the naked eye. Tomorrow, someone

in a white coat will stain and mount my cells,

adjust the focus on the microscope, sip tea

from the machine, discuss last night’s soaps,

search for an expanded nucleus, a distorted edge.

ii Stage IIB

The doctors are teaching me a new language -

invasive and nodes and metastases,

words I never needed to know before this

and I’m rolling them around my mouth,

their aftertaste of sickness and fear and now

she’s bloated up, her steroid-face taking over

the window as I open the fridge, the next dose

here between the Marmite and the Dairylee.

iii The Field

The earth is warm beneath my back;

behind closed lids, the rage and permanence

of the sun. If I opened them there would be

a plump-cheeked child threading daisy chains,

a man with a prayer in his eyes and the moon

hanging on the edge of this daytime sky;

I sense her slow spin, know her

to be part blown, like a dandelion clock.

Victoria Gatehouse

Victoria Gatehouse lives in West Yorkshire. Her poems have appeared in magazines and anthologies including Mslexia, Magma, The Rialto, Poetry News, The Interpreter’s House, Prole, Furies and Her Wings of Glass. Competition placements include Ilkley, Mslexia, Poetry News Members’ Competition, Prole Laureate and The Interpreter’s House. Victoria is a member of the Hebden Bridge Bookcase Poets.

Poetry Space is a great platform for both new and established poets so I was thrilled to hear that two poems of mine had been placed in this competition. As an admirer of John Siddique's work, it was incredibly self-affirming that he selected these poems. Looking forward to seeing the anthology!

John’s report

I love the narrative of this poem, which takes us through an experience which other lesser poets would have bludgeoned the reader with. The short line music brings an insistence to the images. From a nucleus through the language of cancer, through death and back to the everyday; this poem is an incredible journey, which I am thankful for.

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John’s feedback on the commended poems will be published in the prize winners ‘ anthology. All that is left to say is a BIG THANK YOU from Poetry Space to everyone who entered the competition. All profits help Poetry Space to widen participation in poetry and bring more poets to recognition.

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John Siddique

Described ‘as one of the best poets of our generation’ by novelist Bina Shah, John Siddique grew up in a household without books, however his discovery of his local library as a child began a lifelong love affair with words and literature. He started writing poetry in 1991 after reading the work of ee cummings, Walt Whitman and DH Lawrence.

John’s poems, essays and articles have appeared in Granta, The Guardian, Poetry Review, The Rialto and broadcast on BBC Radio 4. His poetry collections for adults  include the critically acclaimed Recital (2009) and Full Blood (2011) and a book for children, Don’t Wear It On Your Head was shortlisted for the CLPE poetry award in 2007.  Awards include a Hawthornden Fellowship, Honorary Creative Writing Fellow (Leicester University) and Fellowship of the Royal Society of Arts.

He has been a resident poet in a variety of venues including Manchester Art Gallery, HMYOI Wetherby and Los Angeles for the British Council. He is currently Royal Literary Fund Fellow at York St John University.

This was John's address to poets when the competition was opened:

Dear poets

I’m really looking forward to receiving your poems for the 2015 Poetry Space Competition. I welcome your entries with an open heart and mind. It might be interesting if you would for a minute put yourself in your correspondent’s shoes, imagine you had been asked to judge this competition, what kind of poems would you want to see? One of the greatest mistakes I make with my writing at times, is where I lose sight of the reader. I’m not saying we should try and write to please that person, but perhaps we should write to please our own inner reader, not our writer. I have never thought of myself as a poet or writer, those are given titles, I am only a reader who occasionally finds himself thinking or feeling, ‘I’d love to read a book or a poem on…’ Yet on looking, it is as if there is a gap on the shelf, and no one has written the book I want to read. I take that always as a message from the universe or the muses telling me that it is my job then to write what needs to be written. So please send those poems, the ones that only you could write – essential and without cliché.

I’ll be honest with you, after being a reader and being on the planet as long as I have been I am not interested nor am likely to choose poetry that’s been designed to win a competition, there are many tricks poets have up their sleeves to make an impression, but I’m just John and I tend to be moved by literature which ascribes to human values and experience, that deals with our dignity and openness. Send me some real poetry that changes the world and life of the reader because it speaks of something essential about life, poetry that only you can bring to the page through your words, music and art, something that is a spark of life that will find a home in the heart of the reader.

I remember chatting with my friend, the late and sorely missed Glyn Hughes, about poems that become your friends. He would often discuss the dangers of coming from an ego place in our writing, and how his can manifest in so many ways, so that we don’t create something essential. Glyn would also talk about how the poems he loved were always with him; he could rely on them. If you have something you feel is like that up your sleeve, I’d love to see it. If you want to know more about my own writing ethos there is an artistic statement at www.johnsiddique.co.uk that pretty much tells you all you need to know, but I want to see your poems, your moments of life, written so that the spark still lives between the words and syllables.

With gratitude

John Siddique

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INDUSTRIAL ACTION

The pudding’s made

the turkey stuffed

the cards displayed

I’m almost chuffed

but Santa’s elves have gone on strike

does anyone know how to wrap a bike?

The family’s here

the party starts

there’s Christmas cheer

and mincemeat tarts

though Santa’s elves have gone on strike

the child learns how to ride a bike

We rush outside

to play in snow

then back inside

for kissing under mistletoe

as Santa’s elves have gone on strike

we need to learn to clean a bike

On Boxing Day we take a walk

while children ride

the grown-ups talk

then bicycle and tree collide

and Santa’s elves are still on strike

does anyone know how to mend a bike?

Daphne Milne

RECIPE

Turkey, sprouts, roast potatoes,

pudding, brandy butter, ice cream,

cheese, biscuits, coffee, nuts, port.

Aunts, uncles, cigars, excess,

Grandparents snoring by the fire, 

Nine lessons and carols from King’s,

mince pies, more brandy butter

parcels under the green fir tree,

elderly films, older comedians,

Christmas specials, tinsel, fake snow,

big white cake with wonky Santa

All the joys of family Christmas

not to be missed by anyone,

no excuses, the annual beanfeast,

just before the New Year’s 

silence, sobriety, diet - hell.

Daphne Milne

Sales Fever (With apologies to John Masefield)



I must go down to the sales again where the sharpened elbows fly
And all I ask is a warm coat and a hat to keep me dry
And a loud crowd on a cold night in a long line snaking
For a rare treat or a new suite, it’s all there for the taking.


I must go down to the sales again to join the swelling tide
Till nine o'clock when the doors unlock and the shoppers flood inside
And all I crave is a full store with wonders overflowing
And a wild rush as the crowds push for every bargain going.


I must go down to the sales again to a day of stress and strife
Where the kick and the pinch won't make me flinch from the bargain hunting life
And all I need are credit cards with enough cash to cover
And time to flaunt the prizes bought when the hurly-burly's over.

Martin John

AFTER CHRISTMAS

It’s the arse-end of the year.

Everyone’s bored and gloomy, or ill.

Weather’s normal – not warm, not dry.

Chugging under the bridge

where we got stuck last night,

we get stuck again.

Finally out of city sprawl –

graffiti, drowned bikes,

floating cans and dereliction –

the extension straight as a Roman road

glitters ahead. The rain’s stopped.

We pootle on towards a New Year.

Jo Waterworth

Christmas Day poems

Christmas Lights

Every bush and tree round here

Looks like it's lit by magic

(Presumably some Elvish power).

It's glorious (or tragic

Depending on your point of view) -

There's red and white and mostly blue

And every darkening hour

They turn the streets a queer

Mix of shades. It's quite unclear

If this improves the celebration

Or reinforces, like the cars, the skis,

The patios, the decoration

Of the trees inside, and all we do,

The outdoing of each other. B & Q?

It's a jungle. We crowd, mewling, like celebrities,

Get me out of here. 

Michael Docker

Without Mince Pies

Let's do without mince pies this year.

I wonder if the skies, this year

Will fall, if we should try this year

To do without mince pies?

It will be thought a crime, I'm sure,

But mince pies all the time? I'm sure

Although they are sublime, I'm sure

We'd cope without mince pies.

Michael Docker

Poems for Christmas Eve

The first of our Christmas poems. Happy Christmas!

One Wise Man

His missus sighed, “I suppose you’re

off chasing stars again this year?  

Where to this time?”

“Bethlehem.”

“And where the heck is that?”

“Two full-moons west of here.”

“Well I never. Better hire

a herd of camels, take a good

supply of dates and presents.

Gold, frankincense and myrrh

are quite in vogue this year.”

“Gold! Camels! Presents!

Giving them away!

Not much profit there, I’d say.”

“Exactly! So tell the other three they’re

going on their own this year. Let’s holiday

away together – just you and me;

I hear The Valley of the Kings has

great weather this time of the year.”

“I’ll go and pack my dear.”

Mike Lee

Walking in Woods on Christmas Eve

Nothing is missing

in this forest of pine trees

look, Christmas presents

 Johanna Boal 

Jingle Bells

Every Father Christmas in the world rocked up,

to protest against the commercialisation

of Christmas,

faces upturned to the heavens,

pleading for some respite from mock reindeers

in shopping malls,

and flashy toys, baubles and billowing cheeks

of cherubs blowing silver trumpets,

past which rivers of people flow

on escalators, to plastic Utopias

“We love the Christmas carols,

but we feel like stuffed turkeys in our red garb

and caps,” chanted one Father Christmas,

while the others chorused:

“Enough is enough, we are on strike.”

On the way to the protest point

each Father Christmas

was given a wand by a real fairy

who said her place had been usurped

by gaudy imitations

on top of artificial trees

They had never been on a protest march,

so could Father Christmas

wave a magic wand and turn

each bogus fairy into a frog

“We will do that and more,”

sang the Father Christmas strikers
”We will turn every bright bauble

and piece of tinsel that we see,

into a partridge in a pear tree.”

Clarissa McFairy

I counted the cakes I’d made:

Rich fruit cakes, iced and decorated with flowers

red roses, delicate yellow freesias,

open daisies, from the fortieth to

the sixty fourth of my parents’ anniversaries.

Christmas cakes, rich and fruity, or apple light

 for every year of my marriage,

including the first we left in the oven

while we went back to bed, letting it burn.

Novelty birthday cakes,

owls, witches, castles, cars, a big red dice,

 football pitches complete with players

I forgot to return to my friend,

and underneath, layers of sponge

filled with jam, or gooey chocolate cake, or gingerbread.

A hundred scones once for cream teas, at school

 flap jacks, brownies for the fair, a cake

 for each cub and scout trip

my boys made ‘so they’d have something from home’ –

the leader’s words.

 Still to count the weekday

cup cakes or the Sunday treats I called a halt,

went on strike. Said that’s it.

The kitchen’s closed to cake.

It lasted for two whole years and then

I went back in, made a Christmas cake,

marzipaned it, iced it, then armed with food dyes:

red, blue, yellow, green, silver, gold

 I splashed the surface with colour

like Jackson Pollock.

Susan Jane Sims

Poetry Space Competition 2014 - FULL RESULTS

Poetry Space Competition closed this year (its fifth) with 223 entries and these included submissions from across the UK and Ireland, South Africa, Canada, Australia, USA, France and Greece.

The winning poems were selected by Alison Brackenbury (photo right) who has provided a detailed report on her choices. (scroll down for this). We really appreciate Alison doing this. She did a fabulous job and in the sweltering summer heat as you'll see from her report...

I would like to say a sincere thank you to everyone who entered and warm congratulations to the winners, the highly commended poets and the runners up. Twenty poems in all from nineteen poets will feature in the new anthology. For want of a better title I have decided to call this For want of a better word, the title of Glen Wilson's winning poem.

Thanks are due too, to Johanna Boal who did a sterling job promoting the competition for Poetry Space and the growing number of  friends of poetry space who handed out flyers and told their friends.

The top three winners are:

1st: Glen Wilson - For Want of a better word 

2nd: Robin Muers - He's settled in quite well

3rd: Angie Butler 'Son, you're 42'

Seven highly commended poems:

Margaret Eddershaw: Scattering

Martin Fuller: Bullet Points

Claire Williamson: She thought her father was a butcher

Patrick Lodge: C'an Freixa

Susan Latimer: Tea Time Truce

Kay Cotton: The Mason

Gail Dendy: The edge of the world

Ten more for publication:

Di Coffey: Hands

Elaine Taylor: Uncle Ruby

Derek Stanley: Out Patience

Jo Waterworth: Widdershins

Roger Caldwell: Going to Coventry

David Lukens: A Circular Life

Anthony Watts: The Bright Room

Denni Turp: Can You Hear Me? Are You Still There?

Ama Bolton: Unfairy Tale

Ama Bolton: Brown Sugar

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Glen Wilson, the winner of Poetry Space Competition had this to say:

I was thrilled when I got the phone call to say that I had won the Poetry Space Competition.  It is always great to hear that your work has been enjoyed by another  and judged worthy of winning a prize (my first!) as well has made it incredibly encouraging.  I am also looking forward to seeing the anthology come out in the future as well. Thanks Poetry Space!

For want of a better word

 

I wrote only one note today;

it said remember to pick up some milk.

The Smiths always forget the milk.

 

They hold then use me roughly,

though I suppose I can’t complain

I do have regular employment.

 

I don’t work for a calligrapher, dancing

elegantly on certificates or a screenwriter

creating Oscar winning  scripts.

 

Those pens have their own velvet homes

while I have been known to be abandoned

in untold places like a common pencil,

 

wedged behind his wax leaking ear,

my end chewed by her cherry

red lips as she looks at the crossword.

 

I remember the year spent lost

down the back of the sofa, ink tears

staining loose change and dust.

 

Eventually they found me again

as Mrs Smith scribbled a phone number down

and smiling  handed it to the milkman.

 

Later I watch Mr Smith pick up another pen

(a biro!) scribble out a letter and leave

it on the bedside table.

 

All I can see from the dresser are the words

trust and goodbye. She cries as she reads

these words and all the words between.

 

I hope that someday she might use me

to pour out her thoughts, because every pen

wants to leave an epigram before it dries.

Glen Wilson

 

Glen Wilson lives in Portadown, Co Armagh with his wife Rhonda and children Sian and Cain. He works as a Civil Servant in Belfast in Statistics and Research.

Glen was part of the Millennium Court Arts Centre Writing group in Portadown for 5 years. His work has been published in Black Mountain Review, Iota, A New Ulster and The Interpreters House. In 2007 He was short listed for the Strokestown Poetry Festival’s Satire Prize. His influences include Leonard Cohen, Seamus Heaney, George Szirtes, Pablo Neruda, and his Christian faith.

 He is currently working on his first collection of poetry.

 

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When told of his prize Robin Muers had this to say:

Really pleased, especially so because this particular poem had been through very many previous versions and major alterations.

He’s settled-in quite well,

they’d like to think.  Today requires

a sun hat, wise ones say.  I’m placed

beside a healthy drink, then left

to find my own excitement, like:

 

a crocodile stalks the patio table,

grabs a wine glass in its teeth.

(My finger’s arthritically bent

to make the light for croc’s bright eye.)

 

Let’s have some other guests!  A bunch

of terracotta frogs in Afro wigs

- seductive scent deployed!  (Official

description: pots of petunia.)

 

Why these games?  Because it’s far

too ‘sensible’ in here: the hand brake

must be ‘on’ both sides of chairs

- all that.  I’ve had enough.  But look:

 

above our Silver-Safe Community

a gang of swifts tears round the sky.

They’re calling me to pass the ball

through fading light.  I leave with them.

 

Robin Muers

 

Robin Muers studied history at university and subsequently qualified as a solicitor.  He worked in various jobs in local government and the public sector before retiring some years ago.  Although always interested in contemporary poetry, he did not make many attempts to write his own until the current century was well under way.  If he wants a poetry book to take on a train journey, a John Burnside collection is most likely to be picked off the shelf.  Robin enters a number of poetry competitions – partly because that gives an incentive to ‘finish and polish’.

 

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Angie Butler had this to say:

 

Finding Poetryspace has made a huge difference to my life.

The daily time to write for the Photo and Poetry Competition allowed me to voice every emotion and to fend off depression and access acceptance and healing.

 I would write and rewrite my emotions. I would have hope that my voice might be heard by an uninvolved stranger. I was inspired to run a competition for other writers to feel the comfort and joy I myself had received.

 

Son, you're 42

 

The chocolate licked off.

The conquest done.

Now on to another.

 

A different one.

To woo, to ravage.

To make my own.

 

Then leave.

Go home.

Go home alone.

 

Angie Butler

 

Angie Butler is a teacher who has always written. Published in several books and magazines, she has researched Land Girls in WW2 and created books and cards to support her work. A founder member of The Penzance Literary Festival, she holds workshops for all ages and abilities. Her story ‘Bodelva’ was performed by the Bournmouth Symphony Orchestra and 600 children, celebrating the 10^th anniversary of The Eden Project in Cornwall. She was honoured as Citizen of the Year 2012 and Cornish Woman of the Year 2014  in  Penzance, for her help in community projects.

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Copyright of all poems printed here remains with their authors - please don't reproduce without permission.

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Honestly’…

Competition Report for the Poetry Space Competition, 2014

Poems must be convincing.  I do not believe that they always need to be honest.  But I think that an account of judging them should be.  It is possible to develop rather grand theories about judging poetry. (I have one or two myself!) But here is an honest account of how my chosen twenty poems shook themselves free from the invitingly fat pile of entries for the Poetry Space Competition, in the summer of 2014.

Throughout a couple of blazing weeks in July, sustained by blinds, choc ices, and two supportive cats, I read all of the poems, several times.  I pored over my ‘Yes’, ‘No’, and ‘Maybe?’ files repeatedly.  But the poems which first captivated, and moved me the most, continued to do so.  My affection for them did not waver with the blinds, or melt with the ice cream.

What did I most admire, about this competition’s three (very varied) prizewinners?  All of these poems had depth. Glen Wilson’s winning poem, ‘For want of a better word’, has a story which enthralled me.  I will not reveal its twists!  After clever flirtations with humour and cliché, this poem swiftly turns into an account of love, with an ending of real pathos.

Many poems in competitions tackle the subject of age.  But the winner of the second prize, Robin Muers’s ‘He’s settled in quite well,’ is one of the best and most surprising I have ever read on this theme.  Its speaker, ‘placed […] then left’ in a wheelchair, is mentally as quick as the swifts in the summer skies above him.

It takes courage to enter a very short poem for a competition.  I am delighted that Angie Butler did so.  ‘Son, you’re 42!’, the third prizewinner, has only nine lines.  But it places the weight of a whole lifetime’s mistakes behind its closing rhyme.

Was it difficult to thin out the remaining pile into seven Highly Commended, and ten poems for the competition anthology?  Honestly, yes.  Many poems were re-read, then put back with a sigh.

I felt that all the Commended poems had exceptional force, in very different ways.  Margaret Eddershaw’s ‘Scattering’ arrested me by its final line.  Martin Fuller’s ‘Bullet Points’ was both absorbing and surprising. Physical vividness and emotional mystery marked Claire Williamson’s ‘She thought her father was a butcher’.  ‘C’an Freixa’, by Patrick Lodge, achieved descriptions of irresistible beauty.  I found ‘Tea Time Truce’, by Susan Latimer, uncompromisingly moving. Kay Cotton’s ‘The mason’ carefully deepened into primitive power. ‘The edge of the world’, by Gail Dendy, set the whole force of its length behind a bravely expansive ending.

From my selection of poems for the anthology, I admire the haunting scents of Di Coffey’s poem ‘Hands’, and the often disturbing detail of Elaine Taylor’s ‘Uncle Ruby’.  I think many readers will recognise the quiet rhythmic truth of Derek Stanley’s ‘Out Patience’, and the child-like sensuality of Jo Waterworth’s ‘Widdershins’.  I am haunted by the unfolding sadness of Roger Caldwell’s ‘Going to Coventry’, shocked and impressed by the tough heroine of David Lukens’ ‘A circular life’.  Virtual life is vivid in Anthony Watts’ The Bright Room’; an intricate music in Denni Turp’s sestina, ‘Can You Hear Me?  Are You Still There?’  Finally, I greatly relished the crisp couplets of ‘Unfairy Tale’, and the deft humour of ‘Brown Sugar’. The judging was, of course, completely anonymous.  When I learnt that both poems were by Ama Bolton, I still felt that these two skilful poems deserved their placing on their own, very different merits.

Why did some poems not escape from my ‘Maybe?’ folder. There were poems, excellent in parts, which showed flaws which I often see in my own writing.  Some poems started strongly, then tailed off.  Others had arresting diction, yet a lack of rhythmic lift, like a beautiful skin with no muscles to make it move.  But there were many poems which did work well, and which I would very much have liked to smuggle into my ‘Yes!’ folder.

I have had the privilege of judging many competitions, both national and local.  I think that Poetry Space is one of the most generous I have encountered.  Many contests have only a few winning poems, which do not appear in print.  Poetry Space has ten winners, including the Highly Commended, and publishes twenty of its entries.  Statistically, you have an exceptionally good chance of being rewarded for entering this competition!

The standard of entries was high this year, and a significant number of the unplaced poems might well have been favoured by a different judge. (Poetry judging is not an exact science.)  So, to all who entered, my thanks for letting me read your varied and thought-provoking poems.  And please do enter again.  Honestly,

2015 could be the year you win the Poetry Space Competition!

 

Alison Brackenbury

 

 

The top three will receive prizes of £250, £100 and £50 respectively and complimentary copies of the anthology.

Twenty poems in all will be published in the prizewinner's anthology.