The 2012/13 Poetry Business Book & Pamphlet Competition

"One of the career milestones for very many poets of note has been winning the prestigious Poetry Business competition." — Anne-Marie Fyfe

The Poetry Business is delighted to announce the winners of the 2012 Book & Pamphlet Competition, as chosen by Simon Armitage:

 

Emma Danes has won the Hamish Canham Prize and the Poetry Society Stanza Poetry Competition. Her poems have been published in anthologies and magazines, including The Best British Poetry 2011 (Salt), Sylvia is Missing (Flarestack), Buzz (Templar), Magma, Poetry News, Poetry Wales, Smiths Knoll and The North. She lives in Ely with her family.

"Dress of Shadows is a particularly accurate and inviting title for this collection, the poems saying one thing, their meanings and inferences lying elsewhere, away from the limelight of the words and their actual subjects. Each poem reads as a worked, crafted and above all measured unit, conscious of the space it occupies on the blank page and the density of its language, tempting the reader to a focal length far beyond its surface. Striking, memorable, confiding and occasionally disturbing poetry penned with a dark ink." — Simon Armitage

 

David Attwooll lives in Oxford where he works in publishing and plays drums in a street band. His poems have been published in various magazines (including Smith's Knoll, Magma, The Rialto, and The Reader) and a selection is in Carcanet's OxfordPoets 2013 Anthology (published in June 2013).

"The supercharged, over-communicative modern world in the form of spam and YouTube crackles and buzzes in several of these poems — but as knowing, playful and occasionally experimental as they are they still have their lyric moments, as if the subconscious is still determined to make its point come what may. I especially like those passages where the sardonic and the poignant are almost impossible to separate or tell apart ... Geographically, linguistically, thematically and stylistically this is a varied and rich collections of poems; Attwool has a keen eye and a sharp tongue but ultimately (I think) a sympathetic mind." — Simon Armitage

 

Kim Lasky grew up in Essex and now lives on the coast in Sussex. She has a Creative Writing doctorate from the University of Sussex. Her poems have been published in journals in the UK and US and have featured in Resurgence Magazine and as the Guardian’s Poem of the Week. She received an Arts Council Award in 2009. Her first short collection What it Means to Fall was published by Tall Lighthouse Press. 

"Petrol, Cyan, Electric combines a conversational tone with passages of linguistic intensity to take on the big subjects: light, love, life. Her observations and descriptions of domestic settings and the characters which populate them are particularly satisfying, and feel fresh, relaxed, never forced. I also enjoy the way the poems dabble or flirt with form and technique - couplets, half rhyme, the sonnet - before ultimately spinning on their heel and waltzing off in another direction. The stock of metaphors seems never-ending. The poems asked me to accompany them and I went willingly." — Simon Armitage  

 

David Grubb writes poetry, short stories and novels. He has been published by Stride, Salt and Shearsman. He was longlisted in the 2013 National Poetry Competition, and was a runner-up in 2006. His latest novel will appear in the autumn. 

"Wallace Stevens's poem 'Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird' has offered a writing template to many subsequent poets, and David Grubb's spin on the original is as inventive as any. Imagism and "the moment" lie at the heart of these fragmentary sequences, though narrative always feels possible, even insistent. Within the same verse or section timeless symbols such as trees and birds find themselves in the company of estate agents and named supermarkets, a reminder of our kaleidoscopic and dislocated lives, and a reminder that poetry might be extracted from everywhere and anything. And that every poem, no matter how brief, is "a small story"." — Simon Armitage  

  

Ben Wilkinson and Steve Ely were highly commended. 

 

 

And, in the Sheffield Poetry Prize category (sponsored by the University of Sheffield and awarded to the best single poem in a manuscript submitted by a Sheffield-based entrant), the winner was:

Julie Mellor, 'A Pint for the Landlord'

2nd prize goes to Karl Riordan for 'The Dabbity', and 3rd prize to Marion New for 'Greenmoor'.

  

Details of the winners' forthcoming collections will be available soon. The launch reading will be held at The Wordsworth Trust on May 18th, and selected poems from the winning collections will be published in North 50 (due next month).

Congratulations to the winners and shortlisted entrants — and thank you very much to everyone else who let us see their work.

The 2013 Book & Pamphlet Competition will be launched in June.