Month: January 2013

Poetry competitions and magazine calls for submission

Sue Watling Poetry competitions ,

York Literature Festival, in association with YorkMix, launches its first-ever poetry competition.

First prize: £100 Second Prize: £60 Third Prize: £30. Four commended poets will each win £15. The competition will be judged by award-winning poet Carole Bromley, and prizes will be awarded on Monday, March 18th at the Black Swan pub in York. Check out the rules here

Buxton Poetry Competition 2013 is now open!

Our theme in 2013 is History and Heritage. Poems could reflect your own history, tell the story of a person or event in history or be a much wider interpretation of this challenging theme. Download an entry pack and read winning poems from 2012 here

Indent issue 2

Last weekend for submissions to Indent issue 2; the annual literary print journal based at Staffordshire University’s Creative Writing Department, Stoke-on-Trent. “…we hope for high quality, international examples ( no, specimens) of volcanic prose & scintillating poetry that push the boundaries of what-is-what. Hybrid pieces: very welcome, as too are personal essays, heteroglossic texts that cannot be pinned down in any way.  WE are looking for NEW literatures that challenge the notion of genre. Hybrid and mash-up, blended & cognitive, alert & alternative. ” Go to http://deviljazz.wordpress.com/category/indent/ for more details

Butcher’s Dog

Publishers of poems from writers with distinct voices, go to http://www.butchersdogmagazine.com/2012/10/home.html  for more details. Submit up

  • to 3 unpublished poems in the body of an email to submissions@butchersdogmagazine.com Submissions
  • welcomed from all writers living in the UK particularly those with a connection to Northern England.
  • Next deadline: 1 March 2013 (Issue 2)

 

Stag’s Leap wins T S Eliot poetry prize

Sue Watling Uncategorized

The 2012 TS Eliot prize for the best new poetry collection has been won by Sharon Olds,  for Stag’s Leap.  In Sharon Olds wins TS Eliot poetry prize for Stag’s Leap collection on divorce in the Guardian, Poet laureate Carol Ann Duffy, chair of the final judging panel, said: “This was the book of her career. There is a grace and chivalry in her grief that marks her out as being a world-class poet. I always say that poetry is the music of being human, and in this book she is really singing. Her journey from grief to healing is so beautifully executed.” Sharon Olds is described as pushing the boundaries of writing about emotional life and intimacy. Stag’s Leap was the unanimous choice of the judges.

I don’t find the poetry of Sharon Olds easy although she evokes images which stay. Maybe this is another aspect of the skill of a poet, where the poem is the mechanism for creating resonance; a  gestalt where the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.  For me, reading her poetry is a process of continually looking for something which defines the words as a poem rather than chopped up prose. I don’t know which one of us is failing.

TS Eliot Prize 2012 Shortlist

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