2024 Open Poetry Competition Shortlist
Congratulations to our 2024 Open Poetry Shortlisted Entries
| Anniversary | Zoe McCann |
| Bees Fly | Shirley Ann Bunyan |
| Daughter, wandering | Richard Lister |
| Euclid observes the end of geometry | Mark Fiddes |
| Fragments of a People | Sumbul Baig |
| Icumen in | Stephen Francis |
| I dreamt my daughter was a child again | Maggie Wadey |
| Ill Years | Roger West |
| Love is a shark | Rachael Clyne |
| New Evidence of Hummingbirds | Mark Fiddes |
| No Crib | Isabella G Mead |
| Nurses at War | Richard Fountaine |
| On Reading Audre Lorde at Annaghmakerrig | Partridge Boswell |
| Siena – July 1997 | Fiona Shillito |
| St Paul of Mariupol | Graeme Ryan |
| Sun Burn | Damen O’Brien |
| The 1860 Oxford Debate | Nairn Kennedy |
| The Anteroom | Judith Drazin |
| This EGM brought to you by Trojan Records | Mark Fiddes |
| Tim’s Dad | John Cockshott |
| To Whom, J With Reminders of the Perils of Donating a Kidney | Ken Evans |
| Unatural Selection | John Gallas |
| Virginia Dirt Shirt | Peter Marshall |
| Vltava | Emilie Jelinek |
| Watching the Swans Being Fed | Judith Drazin |
| Whitsand Bay | Rachel Walton |
Our Open Poetry Competition will be judged by Dr Anthony Joseph FRSL, award-winning Trinidad-born poet, novelist, academic and musician, is a Lecturer in Creative Writing at Kings College, London. His 2022 collection Sonnets for Albert featured at our 2023 Festival and won the TS Eliot Prize for Poetry 2022 and the OCM BOCAS Prize for Caribbean Poetry.
He is the author of five poetry collections and three novels. His 2018 novel Kitch: A Fictional Biography of a Calypso Icon was shortlisted for several awards and his most recent fiction publication is the experimental novel The Frequency of Magic. In 2019, he was awarded a Jerwood Compton Poetry Fellowship.
(As a musician, he has released eight critically acclaimed albums, and in 2020 received a Paul Hamlyn Foundation Composers Award.)
Prize Giving and Poetry Reading takes place on Friday 25 October starting at 10am as part of the Festival.
Book your ticket here.