National Poetry Competition Anthology 2023

National Poetry Competition

WINNERS’ ANTHOLOGY 2023

PRESENTED BY

National Poetry Competition WINNERS’ ANTHOLOGY 2023

JUDGES

Jane Draycott, Will Harris and Clare Pollard

The Poetry Society

The Poetry Society is the UK’s leading voice for poets and poetry. Founded in 1909 to promote ‘a more general recognition and appreciation of poetry’, the Society is one of the most dynamic arts organisations, representing poetry nationally and internationally. With innovative education and commissioning programmes, and a packed calendar of performances, readings and competitions, The Poetry Society champions poetry for all ages. To become part of our poetry community, visit poetrysociety.org.uk

The National Poetry Competition

Established in 1978, The Poetry Society’s National Poetry Competition is one of the world’s biggest and most prestigious poetry competitions. The Poetry Society would like to thank the writers from 110 countries who submitted more than 19,000 poems to the 2023 contest. For many poets, whether established or emerging, the prize has proved an important career milestone. Distinguished winners include Sinéad Morrissey, Ruth Padel, James Berry, Carol Ann Duffy, Jo Shapcott and Tony Harrison. Poems are judged anonymously and the top three winners are published in The Poetry Review, one of the world’s leading poetry magazines. Winners are also invited to participate in further Poetry Society events and commissions. All the winning poems are published on The Poetry Society’s website, poetrysociety.org.uk

The Poetry Society especially wishes to thank our 2023 judges: Jane Draycott, Will Harris and Clare Pollard.

‘Winning the National Poetry Competition feels like a dream come true. I work so hard at my writing, and to have recognition at this level from the judges is incredible. [It] marks an important transition point in my career as a poet.’

– Imogen Wade

First Prize Winner National Poetry Competition, 2023

Imogen Wade

The Time I Was Mugged in New York City

I told people that the travel sickness pills made me stupid. I entered JFK with a red suitcase and no one to greet me. A man came up to me, dressed in black. I found myself in a car park by an expensive van and he was holding my luggage. Get In, he said. There wasn’t a single thought in my head. I found myself inside his van; he locked the doors immediately after; made me switch my phone off as we went under the bridge. We spoke about Niagara Falls. He chose the narrowest roads in the city, a needle making a joke out of Manhattan. When he pulled up outside Grand Central station, he said – don’t get out, there are bad people around. He made me unzip my suitcase, books and bras spilling over the seat, and give him all my money. Then he helped me out of the van like I was a princess; he held my bags like a vassal and kissed my cheek. Get In, I hear whenever a man pushes me too far; Get In to my big black car. Sometimes in my dreams, I am sitting beside him on the leather; I don’t need to be ordered and together, we drive with melodious speed over the East River.

Fawzia Muradali Kane

Eric

His mother chew his ear off. His siblings push him away, so my father friend bring him home in a shoebox. We put him with the guinea pig. The hutch was in the yard, under the rose mango tree, where yard fowl stroll past the stinky duck pond. I feed him hibiscus and roses. Eric thrive. But when we come back after holidays in the Mayaro house, sand still rubbing between my toes, we housesitter uncle say all-you rabbit run away and my father grumble what, run to stew pot eh? Uncle stay quiet. Guinea Pig huddle in the far corner of the hutch, away from the light, refuse to come out for my handful of petals, refuse to eat anything. He fur matt up and one morning before school I find him curl up on he side, open-mouth and stiff. I know from them tv shows that a kiss could make a baby. Eric and Guinea Pig share food then quarrel then play then fall asleep in a tight snuggle over and over. When Pappy put the little body in the shoebox and bury it behind the pond, I see that a boy-rabbit and a boy-guinea pig could love enough, and without each other, even flowers have no meaning.

Rency Jumaoas Raquid

Like Her

A stretch is the beginning of birth. Pine bracts bear cycles of wet and dry

that make the cone bloom and fall. Her wooden fractals teeter around an axis, a spiral

staircase of wombs now pointed towards the ether. Soon she will roll down

that hill and sleep with fungi that collect on her scales, while her children learn

to tickle the clouds. Scoop, cradle, offer her things the needles kept away –

a mellow sun, the autumn crisp. Try to make her happy. Adore the Fibonacci, how

carefully this pattern was planned. Or not planned. A closer look and you are

aware of ridges that run fickle on your skin, the explosions of your irises.

Like her you have been tinkered with by time. Search, find the scales empty.

You have missed the gifts she has offered. The beasts have beaten you to it.

You claim her instead, beautiful after her becoming. How sticky and sharp, the resin that dries on your palms.

A.V. Bridgwood

You have eaten the patriarchy

writes a friend, meaning I’m in my bachelor era, posting a selfie cradling a scotch at the jazz bar’s counter, meaning I’m a girlboss yes queen a digital nomad, posting a selfie with a baby crocodile to the mums’ group chat, tongueless mouth creepy-smooth like a Barbie’s bits meaning I am not afraid when eating alone of snapping my fingers for dessert meaning I am not afraid of the boys who want to drive me somewhere more Instagram-worthy meaning I say yes but curl alone in the back with the fruit, my jostled body remembering the last time I let a man drive, waiting for the wrong turn, the outskirts, dirt filling my mouth, meaning I’m living not just surviving, sort of, eye on the map skewered with dropped pins, places to eat, meaning the star over that wine bar with the phenomenal veal, meaning when the cops pull us over I hide under blue sacking, manmade weave, sweating, terror, prayer, meaning when the plastic lifts and I see the mouth of a gun, the butt of a Coke can, I slip him a twenty, Andrew Jackson’s thin lips scrunched in a fist, meaning he covers me tenderly like a dead girl meaning the swerve as a pregnant dog crosses the broken road and the apples fall, bruises browning in us both meaning I reach out from under my polypropylene shroud and take one, meaning I bite.

george graves crying at video

of cat with asthma

huffing steroid inhaler thru tiny cat nostrils nd mouf hes just like me fr am him

my fuzzed lungs cicada purr soaks into rock

i am a boy in the way a cat or dog is a boy

Harriet Jae

God has M.E.

God is missing lost inside some cloud they say She can’t find Her way out but I reckon She can’t face folk I mean will you look at the state of this place floods overflowing waste God has failed to liaise with the fixers with the sun and even with those who care well God should get out more if God had made a sustainable future for Herself She wouldn’t be in this mess it’s a character flaw it’s Satan Trauma it’s the stress God is a perfectionist that’s why She’s sick God’s always tended to overdo it I mean seven days for fuck’s sake and how many types of parrots mockingbirds tits God says Her world’s disintegrating in Her hands She says the pain is deafening there’s a screaming in Her bones but God’s always been imaginative don’t all Her tests come back negative hard to believe in God and Her version of Truth these days God’s Word is splintering God gets confused I mean where is the cast-iron scientific proof when Peter told Her even the Faithful think she’s gone mad God wailed like a total loon God scorns our solutions She’s drinking weird potions She’s shunning gluten God says She just wants to be heard God wants a cure God preps for welfare appointments like She’s going to war God has just one job to do to heal our fear and get Her shit together well so far God’s gone AWOL God has been pitiful God has crawled across the floor God has lain on the same sofa year after year with no one there God is failing to answer our calls dust has grown on God’s shoes

Katie O’Pray

Sertraline Fever

I dreamt thick marmalade – elastic bagels – dad’s chevy – everything good bleeds orange – I’ve been noticing –the pause before the traffic slows or starts – the cars do move but gingerly – I’ve woken to the steamed peaches of my windows – jangled bags of groceries and the change tray on the bus – copper-full – both my childish earrings tugging at my lobes – I like to eat orange zest and hot sauce and butter -nut squash – everything good blushing warm and dusky – kimchi – inari –the streetlights twitching on in my feeble little body – I am finding the orange in every scene – panning to a chimney pot – a salt lamp – to ripped and rolled train tickets – herb glow –my neighbour’s brickwork but not mine –a skulking tomcat – I tip my hat to him – I am a starlet playing my role so perfectly – I feel like a breaking fever – a clockwork cantaloupe – putting the plastic in the recycling bin and moving my beech lipstick around my lines with poise – drawing attention –my own mouth giving it all meaning – I am humming along to channel orange in the kitchen – sweet life – being happy enough to bear it – smiling wide as a tiger – I’m collecting orange hearts on instagram – can’t hear anyone else talking much – just the hiss of my candles getting smaller – them –becoming more orange flame than wax

Jack Nicholls

To Do

Why did you sit a wax skull on my neck that held my head my whole life and sit my real dead head in a nice display case on top of the nice display case you laid my bones in, and why did you lay my bones like they’re half-getting-up and dressed nice, and hang my ribs with jewels, and why is my head eyeballless over the non-stop orange candle-glow that sits on the neck of the candle that’s non-stop replaced in the little candleholder sat on the floor in front of me? Why is there a candle? Why lock my display cases and why lock me behind nicely-wrought-iron bars and why, over the little gate the candle-replacer-and-lighter locks and unlocks every day, are the nicely-wrought curlicues filthy, draped and filthy with grey and ragged beards of filthy dust?

Because we love you, because we love you, because we love you, because we love you, because we love you, because we love you, because we are very busy.

Anna Selby

Liberty Caps

Psilocybe semilanceata

The first time I met them, we slept where they grew, swam into milky darkness, mist, then four of us huddled in my friend’s van: frankfurters in a sleeve. We read – what did we read? Each time we found a new constellation, we read them a line, a passage of ——?

A walking meditation, scanning the ground, eating as we harvested: our focus so intense it seemed as if we’d lost something tiny and vital to our existence. In Potawatomi, there is a word, puhpowee, ‘the force that causes mushrooms to push up from the earth overnight’.

Liberty caps, ghost hats, every spore with its own conatus. Further in, we sat on the tor that looks like a face in profile: hair pushed back to the sea, gazing out over miles of bracken, clitter, gorse; a bas-relief, the kind one lover might make for another. I imagined having sex with my friend

on the granite at dawn or sunset. Lust must have happened here before: the thighs of my ancestors’ burnt and gold-lit. They’re not having any effect, I thought; looked up –a flock of plovers, high, the light on them, turning: Oh! I said, glitter, and ran towards a poem.

It was a book I loved we’d read on Haytor. I was surprised my friend had it – ah, that’s it: Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac. ‘I am glad I will not be young in a future without wilderness.’ When I translate this line into animate languages

few equivalents exist, or it becomes ‘inland forest’, ‘frozen sea’, ‘us’; a gust of red dust across a low sun.

Madeleine Wurzburger

Oranges

to Nâzım Hikmet (1902–1963)

You and your poems spilling juice, hello to everybody; you were the mailman, you said, spring in the bag of your heart, and I believe you; deliver us oranges in all seasons so that we do not forget to eat, drink, swallow; sometimes people forget the necessity of smelling roses, forget love, hazelnuts, everything! Sometimes, we need a poet.

You and your wives, five of them. I’m not judging. Often, I am sour to my husband when he is sweet to me. Did your marriages make stars, grow the tree inside you, the one you wished? You and your trees… Say a poet was a fruit, you would be an orange, all zest, even prison zings, it’s how you spite guards who deny oranges; the fruit on your tree sings like birds, you said, and I believe the ability to sing after decades at the detention yard, I hear your bird by red prison tiles, jewel in your chest beating. A tree keeps growing. Love…

What is the purpose of an orange, if not hello to everybody, even guards?

Don’t forget red apples, poppy fields, Bosphorus – who can resist that way to be human, remind me that my husband is sweeping leaves in the yard, he wears his rust-coloured t-shirt, close to orange; by good luck I can walk out the door, say hello to my husband, and I do. Sometimes, we need a poet.

Judges

Jane Draycott is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and lecturer in Creative Writing at Oxford University; her eighth collection of poetry, The Kingdom, was published by Carcanet in 2022. She won the 2011 Stephen Spender Prize for her translation of medieval dream-elegy Pearl.

Will Harris is author of the poetry books RENDANG (2020) and Brother Poem (2023), both published by Granta in the UK and Wesleyan University Press in the US, and the essay Mixed-Race Superman (Peninsula Press, 2018). He has won the Forward Prize for Best First Collection and been shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize.

Clare Pollard received an Eric Gregory Award for her first collection of poetry, The Heavy-Petting Zoo (1998), written while she was still at school. It was followed by Bedtime (2002) and Look, Clare! Look! (2005), Changeling (2011) and Incarnation (2017). Her poem ‘Pollen’ was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Individual Poem for 2022 and her first novel, Delphi, was published the same year.

Winners

Imogen Wade – First Prize

Imogen won First Prize in the Ware Poets Open Competition 2023 and was a runner-up in The Poetry Business New Poets Prize 2023. She has been commended in the Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award, the Plough Poetry Prize and the Winchester Poetry Festival Prize. She has been published by The Poetry Review, PN Review and The London Magazine. She contributed to Bi+ Lines: An Anthology

Fawzia Muradali Kane – Second Prize

Fawzia is a Trinbagonian architect and poet, now based in London. Her debut poetry collection Tantie Diablesse (Waterloo Press, 2011) was longlisted for the OCM Bocas Prize. In 2014, Thamesis Publications produced her long sequence Houses of the Dead as an illustrated pamphlet. Current works-in-progress include her collection Guaracara and a long sequence/ dreamscript titled Songs of Sycorax.

Rency Jumaoas Raquid – Third Prize

Rency was born and raised in Quezon City, Philippines. He is a volunteer at the Oxford Poetry Library, a free, open-source library and sharing platform for writers. He is currently a third-year DPhil student at the University of Oxford studying plant development and evolution. His poems are forthcoming.

Commendations

A.V. Bridgwood

A.V. Bridgwood (she/they) is a writer from Manchester. They are a former Foyle Young Poet and recent graduate of UEA’s MA in Creative Writing (Poetry). A.V.’s work is published in journals such as The Interpreter’s House, Lighthouse, and Ink Sweat & Tears. They work as a communications consultant for nonprofit and activist organisations.

george graves

george is a poet living in Norwich, Norfolk. With a firstclass BA in English Literature and Creative Writing, he is currently studying part-time on a scholarship at UEA for an MA in Creative Writing Poetry. Often leaning into sparsity within his work, george enjoys building unusual metaphors and patterning them choppily within his poetry, in order to disrupt lyric fluidity. alongside various musicians, he is most inspired by his close friends at UEA.

Harriet Jae

A wanderer with a wheelchair, Harriet grew up in Scotland and lives in Belgium. Her work is published in Poetry London, Poetry Wales, Modern Poetry in Translation, Mslexia, Under the Radar, Modron, Harana Poetry and elsewhere. In 2022 she was shortlisted for the Live Canon Pamphlet Competition and the Bridport Prize, and longlisted a second time for the Mslexia Women’s Poetry Prize. Harriet was highly commended in the 2023 Fool for Poetry Chapbook Competition.

Jack Nicholls

Jack’s poems have appeared, or are forthcoming, in The Poetry Review, PN Review, The Rialto, The Spectator, Stand, The Scores and The Tangerine, among other magazines. He won third prize in the 2020 National Poetry Competition, and his pamphlet Meat Songs is published by The Emma Press. He recently directed a short film from his own screenplay with funding from the British Film Institute. Originally from Cornwall, he now lives in Manchester.

Katie O’Pray

Katie is a creative facilitator from Bedford. They have been the winner of The ruth weiss Foundation’s Emerging Poet’s Prize and the Oxford Brookes International Poetry Competition. Their work has also been associated with the Manchester Writing Competition, the Magma Poetry Competition, the Out-Spoken Prize for Poetry and Barbican Young Poets, among others. Their debut collection Apricot was published by Out-Spoken Press in October 2022.

Anna Selby

Anna is a poet, intersectional environmentalist and naturalist. Her chapbook, Field Notes (written in and under the Atlantic Ocean using waterproof notebooks), was one of The LRB Bookshop’s Bestsellers for two years running and was an Irish Times Book of the Year. She is a Lecturer at Schumacher College, is doing a PhD on Empathy, Ecology and Plein Air Poetry and was one of the judges for the 2022 Ginkgo Prize for Ecopoetry.

Madeleine Wurzburger

Madeleine lives in Richmond and works as an EFL teacher. She was a winner in the 2018 Poetry Business Book & Pamphlet Competition and had a further pamphlet published by Agnes Kirk Press in 2019. She was longlisted for the Women Poets’ Prize 2022 and Mslexia Women’s Poetry Competition 2023, and commended in the Winchester Poetry Prize 2023. Her poems have appeared in Long Poem Magazine, PROTOTYPE and The North among others.

National Poetry Competition Winners

2022 Lee Stockdale ‘My Dead Father’s General Store In The Middle of a Desert’

2021 Eric Yip ‘Fricatives’

2020 Marvin Thompson ‘The Fruit of the Spirit is Love (Galatians 5:22)’

2019 Susannah Hart ‘Reading the Safeguarding and Child Protection Policy’

2018 Wayne Holloway-Smith ‘The posh mums are boxing in the square’

2017 Dom Bury ‘The Opened Field’

2016 Stephen Sexton ‘The Curfew’

2015 Eric Berlin ‘Night Errand’

2014 Roger Philip Dennis ‘Corkscrew Hill Photo’

2013 Linda France ‘Bernard and Cerinthe’

2012 Patricia McCarthy ‘Clothes that escaped the Great War’

2011 Allison McVety ‘To the Lighthouse’

2010 Paul Adrian ‘Robin in Flight’

2009 Helen Dunmore ‘The Malarkey’

2008 Christopher James ‘Farewell to the Earth’

2007 Sinéad Morrissey ‘Through the Square Window’

2006 Mike Barlow ‘The Third Wife’

2005 Melanie Drane ‘The Year the Rice-Crop Failed’

2004 Jon Sait ‘Homeland’

2003 Colette Bryce ‘The Full Indian Rope Trick’

2002 Julia Copus ‘Breaking the Rule’

2001 Beatrice Garland ‘undressing’

2000 Ian Duhig ‘The Lammas Hireling’

1999 Simon Rae ‘Believed’

1998 Caroline Carver ‘horse underwater’

1997 Neil Rollinson ‘Constellations’

1996 Ruth Padel ‘Icicles Round a Tree in Dumfriesshire’

1995 James Harpur ‘The Frame of Furnace Light’

1994 David Hart ‘The Silkies’

1993 Sam Gardiner ‘Protestant Windows’

1992 Stephen Knight ‘The Mermaid Tank’

1991 Jo Shapcott ‘Phrase Book’

1991 John Levett ‘A Shrunken Head’

1990 Nicky Rice ‘Room Service’

1989 William Scammell ‘A World Elsewhere’

1988 Martin Reed ‘The Widow’s Dream’

1987 Ian Duhig ‘Nineteen Hundred and Nineteen’

1986 Carole Satyamurti ‘Between the Lines’

1985 Jo Shapcott ‘The Surrealists’ Summer Convention Came to Our City’

1984 Tony Curtis ‘The Death of Richard Beattie-Seaman in Belgian Grand Prix, 1939’

1983 Carol Ann Duffy ‘Whoever She Was’

1982 Philip Gross ‘The Ice Factory’

1981 James Berry ‘Fantasy of an African Boy’

1980 Tony Harrison ‘Timer’

1979 Medbh McGuckian ‘The Flitting’

1978 Michael Hulse ‘Dole Queue’

To watch recordings of this year’s National Poetry Competition winners and explore our archive of poems from across the four decades of the competition, visit poetrysociety.org.uk/npc

The National Poetry Competition is one of the world’s biggest and most prestigious poetry competitions, and an important career milestone for both established and emerging poets.

The 2024 competition launches in May, closing date 31 October 2024.

For more information and to sign up to receive updates, visit poetrysociety.org.uk/npc

National Poetry Competition Winners’ Anthology 2023

The Poetry Society, 22 Betterton Street, London WC2H 9BX poetrysociety.org.uk

ISBN: 978-1-911046-51-6

National Poetry Competition 2023 cover artwork by Daniel Liévano

Image credits: AV Bridgwood (photo, Meg Hester Evans); Jane Draycott (photo, Jemimah Kuhfeld); Will Harris (photo, Matthew Thompson); Fawzia Muradali Kane (photo, Karen Brooks); Jack Nicholls

© The Poetry Society & authors, 2024

(photo, Julie Burrow); Clare Pollard (photo, Sophie Davidson); Anna Selby (photo, Marguerite Legros).