Lock gates, river soundscapes, and poems accompanying pictures of forgotten London all feature in the nominations for this year's Ted Hughes Award for New Work in Poetry. Colette Bryce, Roy Fisher, Ruth Padel, Mario Petrucci, Denise Riley, Kate Tempest and Tamar Yoseloff are on the shortlist, and the winner will be announced later this month, on 27 March, at the same time as the winner of the National Poetry Competition. The judging panel is made up of poets Ian Duhig and Maura Dooley, and artist Cornelia Parker. Kate Tempest reacted to the news of her shortlisting by tweeting: "Brand New Ancients been shorlisted for the Ted Hughes award for poetry. And people love to say 'performance poets' arent proper. Yes Mate." 

Colette Bryce was nominated for Ballasting The Ark, poem-films produced by in collaboration with artist Kate Sweeney, as part of Bryce’s Leverhulme residency at the Dove Marine Laboratory, Cullercoats, with an accompanying short book of poems published by Newcastle Centre for the Literary Arts.

Roy Fisher has written a series of short poems for Hillmorton locks, installed on the Oxford canal, near Rugby, as part of the Locklines project, which Write Out Loud reported on earlier this year. Sculptor Peter Coates designed, carved and inlaid the lines of poetry on to green oak lock gate beams, created for locations requiring replacement gates this winter. Fisher has also written for Farmer’s Bridge lock, Birmingham. Locklines is produced by Chrysalis Arts as part of a wider partnership between the Canal & River Trust and Arts Council England in association with the Poetry Society.

Ruth Padel’s book The Mara Crossing weaves science, myth, wild nature and human history to conjure a world created and sustained by migration, in 90 poems interwoven with prose interludes.

Mario Petrucci’s Tales from the Bridge, commissioned by the mayor of London, was the world’s largest 3D poetry soundscape, launched on the river Thames as a centrepiece for the 2012 Cultural Olympiad. Petrucci's poetry script for two voices was built into a score composed by Martyn Ware, in collaboration with artistic director David Bickerstaff, to create a poetic experience spanning London’s Millennium Bridge.

Denise Riley’s A Part Song is an elegy or lamentation in different modes, written in response to the death of her son. The sequence in 20 sections first appeared in the London Review of Books and publication was accompanied by a podcast of Riley reading the poem.

Kate Tempest’s Brand New Ancients, an hour-long spoken story told over a live orchestral score, tells the tale of two families as they intertwine and collide, set against a backdrop of mythology and the city. Tempest's touring show was produced in partnership with Battersea Arts Centre, with a score by Nell Catchpole in collaboration with and performed by Kwake Bass, Raven Bush, Natasha Zielazinski and Jo Gibson.

Tamar Yoseloff’s Formerly is a collaborative exhibition by Yoseloff and Vici MacDonald commemorating forgotten corners of a London now fast disappearing. Yoseloff has written a cycle of 14 irregular and anarchic sonnets, in response to MacDonald’s grainy photographs of shop fronts, council estates and industrial sites. The show premiered at the Poetry Cafe and was also at the Poetry Library.