Competition judge Katherine Stansfield announced the Wales Poetry Award finalists live at Seren Cardiff Poetry Festival last weekend. The competition was hosted by Poetry Wales and sponsored by the Department of English and Creative Writing at Aberystwyth University.
The nine highly commended poets this year included Omar Majeed, Katie Gramich, Giles L. Turnbull, Robert Havard (who has previously been published in Volume 8 of Poetry Wales!), Jan Norton (twice-highly commended this year), Elena Croitoru, Philippa Davies, Les Jones and Thomasson Taylor.
Our top three finalists included Jan Harris who was awarded third place, local poet Elizabeth Porter who was awarded second place and Leo Temple, whose experimental poem took first place. Our top three finalists will find their winning poems published in upcoming issues of Poetry Wales.
Watch our recorded livestream of the ceremony on YouTube, featuring readings from the prize- and award-winners themselves.
Read all our shortlisted poems in our previous post.
We hope Wales Poetry Award will remain a fixture for the magazine after the success of its inaugural year.
Following the excitement of the prizegiving ceremony was yet more excitement in the form of the Poetry Wales Party celebrating our newest issue from new editor Jonathan Edwards. The Poetry Wales Party was lively and well-attended by the local poetry community with an opening performance from Phil Jones of Dusty Cut, followed by readings from Emily Cotterill, Marvin Thompson, Abeer Ameer, Katherine Stansfield and Zoe Brigley. The party was hosted by an incandescent Jonathan Edwards.
View our gallery of photos and videos below.
Did you attend this year’s prizegiving ceremony and launch party? What was your favourite poem in our shortlist? Let us know in the comments, and don’t forget to subscribe to Poetry Wales to read even more fantastic poetry all year round.
My favourite poem was ‘The Coracle’ by Thomasson Taylor.
Best regards,
Thomasson Taylor 😉
(But seriously, congratulations to the Top 3 and the excellent Highly Commended poets – and many thanks indeed to all at Poetry Wales for a great evening!)