Poets Jackie Hagan, Raymond Antrobus, and Jane Commane have each been awarded £15,000 inaugural Jerwood Compton Poetry Fellowships, in a collaboration between the Jerwood Charitable Foundation and Arts Council England.

The year-long fellowships "invest in the process and practice of making poetry, rewarding individuals who are making, or are capable of making, a significant contribution to a community of poetry".

Manchester-based Jackie Hagan is, in her own words, “a queer amputee with an autoimmune disease, who was reared underclass in Skelmersdale”. She had her leg amputated four years ago this month, due to her condition. Hackney-born page and spoken word poet Raymond Antrobus explores deafness, diaspora and language, while poet and Nine Arches Press publisher Jane Commane, based in Warwickshire, is interested in the complexities of class, ideas of place and identity, and the climate of austerity Britain. Her first full-length collection is due from Bloodaxe next year.

Jackie Hagan said she felt “validated and accepted into a community that I sometimes feel too wonky, un-London and broken-toothed to be part of. I’m currently threadbare, so I want to get my bones full of hope, and enough space around my head so that I am capable of archiving the lives of the current disabled underclass with insight, humour and accuracy. There’s so much work to be done in the world and I know I can do it well, but then rent day comes and so I do loads of work for money. Having a Jerwood Compton Poetry Fellowship means I can have a Ready Brek glow to go into the scary bits of towns and make a difference.”

Raymond Antrobus said: “This opportunity has come to me at an exciting time: when people are realising how broad the category of poetry is and its value. More importantly, this fellowship has won me time. I have been scraping by for the last 10 years and I haven’t had the privilege to prioritise my own work. The Jerwood Compton Poetry Fellowship is the first grant I have won which allows me to prioritise my craft as a poet, rather than as a teacher or community leader. I hope being one of the first recipients of the Fellowships gives me the opportunity to trailblaze.”

Jane Commane said the fellow meant “permission to take your work seriously, by gifting the time and resources to make that concentration on the quiet work - the craft of poetry - possible. Poetry has a really important role in how we respond to and interpret the world about us; there's no doubt we're living in strange and challenging times as a country, and as a world. I will be thinking and writing about poetry's role in terms of history in the making, and how poetry can be a voice for change, documentation and response to our age. People and place mean a great deal to me, so no doubt the Midlands, and canals, rivers, cities and roads will be themes that find their way into some of this too.”

The fellowships involve access to mentors and critical friends, with no expectation of work being produced at the end of the year-long fellowships. The selection panel included writer, critic and academic David Dabydeen; poets Kate Fox and Mimi Khalvati; Gemma Seltzer, relationship manager (literature), Arts Council England; and Shonagh Manson, director, Jerwood Charitable Foundation.