Allison McVety wins National Poetry Competition
Allison McVety has won this year’s National Poetry Competition with her poem To The Lighthouse, the Poetry Society announced last night. Her debut collection, The Night Trotsky Came to Stay, was shortlisted in 2008 for the Forward Best First Collection prize. Her second collection, Miming Happiness, was published in May 2010. Boy on the Bus, a poem from her first collection, appears in Poems of the Decade, an anthology of the Forward books of poetry 2002-11. Runner-up was Samantha Wynne-Rhydderch with Ponting, and third was Zaffar Kunial, with Hill Speak
Commended poems were White Basin by Lindy Barbour; Birmingham Roller by Liz Berry; In Vitro by Antony Dunn; Photograph by Rosalind Hudis; How to Furnish an Amercian House by Helen Klein Ross; Springtime of the Nations by SJ Litherland; Our Lady of the Pylons by Ian McEwen; and Blue Poison Dart Frog by Jon Stone.
Photograph: Derek Adams
Isobel
Wed 11th Apr 2012 09:57
I enjoyed the winning poem and didn't see it as inaccessible - just very subtle.
They were all great poems - as you'd expect. Like Cynthia says, there's no judging 1st 2nd 3rd really - it's all subjective and often down to luck.
Prose poetry seems very much flavour of the day though. I doubt you'd stand any chance of winning if you submitted a rhyming one. The Death of Rhyme - good title for a discussion thread?