2020 International Poetry Competition
£1000 first prize for a single poem
Guest Judge: Mona Arshi
We are delighted to announce that the 2020 competition has been won by Paul Terence Carney for his poem 'Wind Up Eyeballs'.
Below is the longlist and shortlist - all 50 longlisted poems appear in our 2020 anthology. We're so proud of it!
Shortlist:
Akshayaa Chittibabu, Pariah
April Yee, West/East
Christian Wethered, Call
David Butler, Distancing
Elizabeth Neal, A Violet I Plucked from Mother's Grave
Emma Simon, The Actuaries
Helena Li, Breaking Waves
Jacqueline Schaalje, Daniella Has Good Lungs
Kathryn Bevis, Tidal Race
Kathy Pimlott, In Regents Park
Laura Theis, advice from one who's been burnt before
Mel Pryor, Entering Her 50th year
Michaela Coplen, Airline Miles
Nicky Kippax, People came
Nora Nadjarian, Nausicaa
Paul Carney, Wind-up Eyeballs
Rachel Lee, Place Name: Bishan –
Sharon Black, Instead of gulls
Tabitha Hayward, Khnum
Theresa Muñoz, Brothers
Longlist:
Adam Lowe, Cargo Cult
Alexandra Melville, Mother's Mother
Andrew George, Our Household Goods
Arji Manuelpillai, to my brother’s ex-wife whom I saw on the northern line
Claire Dyer, The girl with the light inside
Denisa Vítová, lingua franca
Dipo Baruwa-Etti, The Line
Fiona Larkin, Madonna of the Parenting Manual
Hannah-Lee Osborn, More Like Wrestling Than Dancing
Heidi Beck, Hunting Season
Jo Brandon, Waste: A History
Jonathan Edwards, Photograph of Joe Strummer as a Gravedigger, St Woolo’s Cemetery, Newport, 1974
Jonathan Greenhause, Skywards
Joolz Sparkes, The ringmaster's sleepless nights
Katie Griffiths, The sex training-video is full of plot holes/socks
Laura Davis, Amicus Curiae Brief
Lisa Kelly, Design of Deaf-Aid and Conference Amplifiers with Corrected Characteristics, August 1938
Maia Elsner, Elegy to the howler monkeys
Mark Fiddes, Goldfinches
Martyn Crucefix , How to talk to your children
Nathan Evans, And One Day It Stopped
Pam Thompson, An afternoon
Paul Stephenson, Boy at the End of a Long Narrow Garden
Rod Whitworth, This year
Sarah Barnsley, Ode in the wrong time and place
Selina Rodrigues, Ferocious
Tjawangwa Dema, To husband
Vanessa Lampert, Rain
William Stephenson, The Drone Studio
Mona Arshi
is a poet and human rights lawyer. Her debut collection Small Hands won the Forward Prize for best first collection in 2015. Mona’s second collection, Dear Big Gods, was published in 2019 and both are available from Pavilion Press. She has also been a prizewinner in the Magma, Troubadour and Manchester creative writing competitions… and this year, judged the National Poetry Competition.
Mona has performed her work at over 40 festivals internationally and in 2017 was on the judging panel for the Forward Prize and co-hosted the awards at the Royal Festival Hall. She can be heard regularly on our radios including on Front Row and was commissioned by Radio 4 for The Odyssey Project: My Name is Nobody in 2017. Mona teaches regularly in schools and colleges and has curated poetry events at the House of Commons with EVAW (End Violence Against Women) on International Woman’s Day. She co-edited a special issue of POEM magazine on the theme of BREXIT in June 2017.