< Back Results of the 2009 Poetry Competition
(the final judging by Carol Ann Duffy, poet, playwright and freelance writer - recently appointed Poet Laureate)
The total number of entries for this category was 416. Results are as follows:
First Prize
M Lee Alexander The Gift of Flight USA
Carol Ann Duffy comments: ' A poem of memory and bereavement, The Gift of Flight transcends the ordinary with the gorgeousness of its language and its true-poet’s love of listing- sparrows, finches, buntings, wrens. The balancing of the decorative and living birds in the first and final verses manages to be both skilful and moving, and the poem has a lovely, human, humour. '
M Lee tells us that she teaches creative writing, detective fiction, and ESL at William and Mary where she says working with students keeps her young or at least thinking that way! She's an incorrigible Anglophile and was thrilled when the Queen visited campus recently. Her secret vice is watching britcoms on Youtube. She’s both delighted and honoured to have won this year’s poetry prize.
Second Prize
Jennifer Copley There's A Graveyard Near the Sea England
Carol Ann Duffy comments: ' Sonnet-length, with the title as the first line, this poem is urgently physical and beautifully detailed - we imagine the upright dead, pining for their fishing nets or bowls of dough. The ending amazingly turns the shocking into the tender. '
Jennifer Copley tells us that she lives in Cumbria in her grandmother’s house where five generations of her family have also lived. She has had three collections of poetry published, with a fourth (Beans in Snow) coming out shortly with Smokestack. She has been writing for about thirteen years and has been a prize winner in several major competitions eg. National winner in the Ottakar’s and Faber (2006), 2nd prize in the Academi Cardiff (2007), 2nd prize in the Essex (2008) and 2nd in the Ware (2009). She says: ‘To get such praise from Carol Ann Duffy in the Yeovil Prize is terrific. It was emailed round to all my friends within minutes.’
Third Prize
Heather Harrison The Sylkie England
Carol Ann Duffy comments: ' a re-working of the old legend of fishermen who fall in love with seal-women, or sylkies. Here is another poet with a deep, confident relish for the sound of words - ‘shreds the mended sheets to whipping rags’ - and an effortless talent for rhyme and for the music of verse. '
Heather Harrison tells us she is an exiled Geordie. She says "I have been teacher, wife and mum . Now I am writing full time. In the 1980s I had poems, prose and short stories broadcast, poetry commissions from Wolverhampton Art Gallery and West Midlands Arts and published a poetry collection, ‘Roots Beneath the Pavement’. In 2004 I had three poems performed at the Royal Shakespeare Company New Writing festival. I won the Seafield Publishing Poetry Competition in 2005 and Warwickshire Arts Festival Open Poetry Competition in 2006.I have recently had poems published in ‘Orbis’, ‘Staple’ and Cinnammon Press’s anthology of narrative verse, ‘In the Telling’. I have completed my first children’s novel and am working on the second."
Highly Commended
Jeanette Burton A Game Of Chance England
Deborah Harvey Prawle Point England
Stephen Holloway Coastal Bluff England
Sharon Keating Seadog England
Chris Robinson Downsized England
Tracey S Rosenberg Captain's Colours Scotland
Nigel Speight Virtual Unreality England
Geraldine Walsh How to Put Words to this Sentiment Eire
Julia Webb The Unknowing England
Commended
Sharon Black Crackling France
Sharon Black Rainbows France
Jim Bradbury A Permanent Wave Goodbye England
John Hawkhead Farewell To Basra England
Richard Labram Dreaming England
Daphne Schiller Coming From My American Lit Class England
Beverly Stark Flower Press England
  ^ Page Top   < Back