Seven poets have won this year’s Bread and Roses poetry awards, organised by arts website Culture Matters. The seven are: Jane Burn (‘Handbook for 2021’);  Annie McCrae (‘A Stitch in Time’); Raymond Miller (‘Donkey Jacket’); Jenny Mitchell (‘Burden of Ownership’); Antony Owen (‘If Boris Johnson had a Cuppa with my Nan from Willenhall’); Laura Taylor (‘Salvation’); and Sylvia Telfer (‘All Our Shadows are Black’).

The judges were Andy Croft of Smokestack Books and Mary Sayer from Unite union. Andy Croft said: “It is hard to write about the injustices of contemporary society without slipping into easy denunciations, second-hand phrases and borrowed anger. The best political poetry should also be painful to read, interrogating itself and challenging what the reader thinks they know or believe to be true.

“The entries to this year’s Bread and Roses competition certainly share a sense of impatient rage and revulsion at the way the world works; but they are also distinguished by intellectual ambition, literary technique and political resilience. And they say what needs to be said about the subjects that matter most – inequality, work, unemployment, solidarity, struggle, homelessness, racism, illegal wars, environmental disaster.”

An anthology containing a selection of entries will be available to buy later in the year. To order copies in advance contact info@culturematters.org.uk