*Emerging artists on shortlist for most valuable poetry prize*
Mark Brown, Arts correspondent
Iambic pentameters, hexameters and trochees have been drawn. Britain's most
valuable poetry prize today releases its shortlist, featuring a higher than
usual number of new and emerging poets.
Poems published by specialist presses are also well represented in the
Forward poetry prize list, on which women outnumber men for the first time
since 1999.
Judges chose six poets from 133 collections they considered for the £10,000
best collection prize, including the prolific Sujata Bhatt, whose poem
Search for my Tongue will be familiar to many GCSE English students.
Her collection Pure Lizard is shortlisted, as is that of another familiar
name, Jamie McKendrick, who won the prize in 1997 and is on the list for his
fifth collection, Crocodiles and Obelisks.
Lovers of poetry with longer memories may recall Mick Imlah, who published
his first collection in 1988 and waited 20 years to follow it up this year
with The Lost Leader.
Well known in poetry circles, Imlah's new poems have been much praised, with
the Guardian review saying the volume "has an overall coherence, strength
and emotional depth seldom encountered in modern poetry collections".
They are up against three poets from the up and coming generation: Catherine
Smith, a creative writing tutor at Sussex University, for Lip; Jane
Griffiths, an English lecturer at Bristol University, for Another Country;
and Jen Hadfield, who lives in Shetland working as a poet, tutor, artist and
occasional shop assistant, who is shortlisted for her second collection
Nigh-No-Place, which she wrote in Canada.
The prize for the best single poem will be fought out by six poets,
including Seamus Heaney — still yet to win anything in the prize's 17-year
history — who is shortlisted for Cutaways. The others are Christopher
Buehlman for Wanton; Catherine Ormell for Campaign Desk, December 1812; Don
Paterson for Love Poem for Natalie 'Tusja' Beridze, Kate Rhodes for
Wells-next-the-Sea, and Tim Turnbull for Ode on a Grayson Perry Urn.
The £5,000 prize for best first collection will be decided between Simon
Barraclough for Los Alamos Mon Amour, Andrew Forster for Fear of Thunder,
Frances Leviston for Public Dream, Alison McVety for The Night Trotsky Came
to Stay, Stephanie Norgate for Hidden River and Kathryn Simmonds for Sunday
at the Skin Launderette.
William Sieghart, founder of the awards and chairman of the Forward Arts
Foundation, said it was an exciting year for stars of the future as well as
poets who deserved more exposure.
He added: "It's thrilling to see a huge presence of specialist presses who
are offering a platform for poets with exceptional futures." The winners
will be announced on October 8.
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Anny Ballardini
http://annyballardini.blogspot.com/
http://www.fieralingue.it/modules.php?name=poetshome
http://www.moriapoetry.com/ebooks.html
I Tell You: One must still have chaos in one to give birth to a dancing
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