“A poetry competition is a poetry slam on paper. The winners of Cardiff International Poetry Competition are exceptional. We applaud them for how they performed on the page. They blew us away and put us back together. Choosing them as winners is our standing ovation.”
This was the comment made by judges Lemn Sissay and Rhian Edwards on the prize-winners for the 2014 Cardiff International Poetry Competition. The much awaited results of the 2014 Competition were announced on Thursday 17 July as part of an evening of poetry at Waterstones Cardiff where guests were also treated to readings from 2013 Wales Book of the Year winner Rhian Edwards and award-winning poet Lemn Sissay.
The First Prize of £5,000 was awarded to Isabel Rogers from Hampshire for her poem John’s Curious Machines. Isabel’s poetry has been published in magazines including Poetry Wales and Mslexia, and was shortlisted in the recent Charles Causley competition. Isabel is currently working on a first collection.
Second Prize of £500 was awarded to Liane Strauss from London for her poem It. Liane, who’s poems have been widely published, is the Head of Poetry in Creative Writing at Birkbeck College, University of London. K.V. Skene’s poem This City Wades into Ontario won third prize of £250. K.V. Skene currently lives in Toronto Canada and her latest collection, You Can Almost Hear Their Voices, was published by Indigo Dreams Publishing in 2010.
The five equal runners-up in the competition, each receiving £50, are: Angela Readman from Newcastle Upon Tyne for her poem The Preachers Son and the Bee Beard; Edward Storey from Discoed for his poem The Only Landscape We Can Trust; Pat Winslow from Witney for her poem Con Brio: Mandy Pannett from West Sussex for her poem You Say You Don’t Do Smiles; and Polly Walshe from Oxford for her poem Your Childhood.
The winner of the first prize will appear exclusively in print and digital formats in New Welsh Review #105, published on 1 September 2014. To read all of this year’s winning poems and to find out more about the winners themselves, visit: www.literaturewales/cipc/
The Cardiff International Poetry Competition is administered by Literature Wales with the generous support of Cardiff Council.
