Some previous competition winners...

See the menu on the left for full details of all the competition winners since 2004.

"I still remember getting the call to say I’d won the Book and Pamphlet Competition and having to keep it secret until the announcement was made. But beyond the immense joy of winning and the knowledge that your poems have been read by a judge at the height of their skill comes the hard graft and close attention that shapes a manuscript into a pamphlet or full-collection. The help and editing I got from the Poetry Business really brought it all together, made it work."

— Allison McVety, 2006 overall winner

"It was a wonderful boost of confidence for me, winning the Poetry Business Pamphlet Competition. It felt like a justification of the time I spent writing and an encouragement to keep going. It was the original and only pamphlet competition back then, and so it felt particularly significant — that being judged anonymously on a group of poems, not just a single one."

— Michael Laskey, 1988 winner

"When I found out I was a first stage winner in the Poetry Business Book and Pamphlet competition, I allowed myself to think of myself as a 'real' poet. I'd had poems published in magazines and anthologies before...but this was different. This meant my own colourful 'slim volume'. my own ISBN. When the copies of The New Bride, in all their turquoise loveliness, arrived, I felt like the proud Mother of the Bride. The slim volume was shortlisted for The Forward Prize for Best First Collection (2001). It didn't win, but it did open lots of doors. My first full collection, The New Bride, came out with Smith Doorstop in 2003; the following year I was included in both the Mslexia Top Ten Women Poets list, and the PBS/Arts Council 'Next Generation' promotion. My latest book, Lip, was short-listed for The Forward Prize in 2008. These things wouldn't have happened without the faith and support of the brilliant small but perfectly formed publisher that is Smith Doorstop."

— Catherine Smith, 2000 winner

"The experience of finalising a pamphlet helped me greatly with how to organise a collection of poems. I was invited to many readings after the pamphlet was published and this helped me develop my reading style and meet some lovely people from the poetry community along the way. The publicity and reviews took my work seriously and I gained exposure in the PBS and the broadsheets, all this was entirely unexpected and absolutely thrilling. I still feel so excited to have been picked up by S/D at an early stage of my writing life."

— Daljit Nagra, 2002 winner

"In the early 1990s there weren’t all the poetry workshops and courses that there are now, nor all the prizes. The Poetry Business was a fairly solitary star in the firmament with its workshops and pamphlet prize forged in the Poetry Capital of England. It was really ahead of its time. It was thrilling to win the prize with Peter Daniels whose poems I admire very much. It felt particularly an honour as Carol Rumens was the judge, and she’d recently edited an anthology of new women poets for Bloodaxe. I remember the slightly nervous pleasure of putting together a group of poems, thinking that, perhaps, the time was ripe to enter, but the delighted surprise when the Competition result letter arrived in the post on a sunny morning."

— Moniza Alvi, 1991 winner

Notes on the experience of judging the competition:

You have not seen the sky grown dark. You have not realised that you are hungry. You have forgotten to feed the cat. You are engrossed in the work of the finalists for the Poetry Business Book & Pamphlet Competition

Be warned! Good poetry can seriously disrupt your life.

– Alison Brackenbury