Competition 2012
The competition, sponsored by the University of Strathclyde and hosted by the Book Festival, offers one of the biggest poetry prizes in the UK, with awards totalling £6,600.
2012 will be the fifth year the competition has run and this year's judges will be Don Paterson and Gillian Ferguson. For the first time we will also be accepting entries in Scots. The competition will open for online and postal entries on February 1st 2012 and this year's prizegiving will take place at the Edinburgh International Book Festival in August.
Don Paterson
Don Paterson’s first poetry collection, Nil Nil (1993), won the Forward Prize for Best First Collection. God’s Gift to Women (1997) won both the T.S. Eliot Prize and the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize, and Landing Light (2003) won the Whitbread Poetry Award and an unprecedented second T.S. Eliot Prize. Christina Patterson, reviewing Landing Light for the Independent, praised Paterson as “one of the few poets writing today whose work combines postmodern playfulness with a sense of yearning for the transcendental.” Paterson’s poem “A Private Bottling” won the Arvon Foundation International Poetry Competition. He has also won an Eric Gregory Award, three Book Awards from the Scottish Arts Council, and a Creative Scotland Award. His most recent collection is Rain (Faber, 2009) which won the 2009 Forward prize.
Paterson has edited 101 Sonnets: From Shakespeare to Heaney (1999) and co-edited, with Jo Shapcott, Last Words: New Poetry for the New Century (1999) and, with Charles Simic, New British Poetry (2004). In an interview for the Independent, Paterson describes The Eyes (1999), his versions of poems by Spanish poet Antonio Machado, as “piano transcriptions of guitar music.” His 2006 translation of Rainer Maria Rilke’s Sonnets to Orpheus was praised by poet Mark Doty for its success in capturing “an unsettling, destabilizing force.”
Paterson is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. In 2008, for his service to literature, he was appointed OBE. In 2010 he was awarded The Queen’s Gold Medal for poetry. He joined the London publisher Picador as poetry editor and teaches creative writing at University of St. Andrews.
Gillian K. Ferguson
Gillian K Ferguson is an award-winning poet and journalist. Her poetry has been praised as “dazzlingly original” and “gorgeously luminous”, and she won a prestigious Creative Scotland award for her groundbreaking digital project on the Human Genome at www.thehumangenome.co.uk. This ambitious work received significant critical acclaim, including from broadcaster and writer Andrew Marr and world renowned scientist, Francis Collins, Head of the US Human Genome Project, as well as extensive media interest. The site has received tens of thousands of visits from 63 countries. Her previous book, ‘Baby’ - the first to chart the whole experience of becoming a mother – was a bestseller and a unique edition was commissioned by High Street chain GAP.
The award of her fourth Writer’s Bursary and a continued interest in science, has recently resulted in ‘Flora’, poems exploring the genetic connection between man and flowers. Her first book, ‘Air for Sleeping Fish’ (Bloodaxe), was shortlisted for the Scottish First Book of the Year, and she was a prizewinner in the Arvon International Poetry Competition. Her work appears in various anthologies, including the Faber Book of 20th Century Scottish Poems (Faber); Dream States (Faber); The New Scottish Poets (Polygon), as well The Edinburgh Book of 20th Century Scottish Poetry (Edinburgh University Press), and 100 Favourite Scottish Poems (Luath/Scottish Poetry Library). Suzi Feay named her in the Independent on Sunday piece, ‘Bestsellers of the Future’. She was a Tutor in Arts at the Open University, and a columnist at The Scotsman, Scotland on Sunday and the Financial Times magazine.
Rules
- The closing date is 9am on Monday 4th June 2012.
- Maximum of 60 lines per poem
- The Prize is open to anyone, including non-UK applicants, over 18 years
- Entries must be entirely the work of the entrant and must never have been published, self-published, published on any website or broadcast (this includes publication on social networking sites, e.g. Facebook).
- Entries may be in English or Scots.
- Entries must be anonymous with no identifying marks other than the title
- Alterations cannot be made to poems once they have been submitted
- Entrants can submit up to 3 (three) poems, provided the appropriate entry fee is included: the entry fee is £5 per poem
- No employee of the University of Strathclyde may enter the competition
- The copyright of each poem remains with the author. The authors of the winning poems must grant the University of Strathclyde the right to use the poems for one year from date of award
- Prizewinners will be notified by July 25th 2012. The list of prizewinners will be displayed on the website after the prize-giving ceremony.
- This year's prizegiving will take place at the Edinburgh International Book Festival in August.
- The judge's decision is final and no correspondence can be entered into
- Competition entries cannot be returned.
- Entry implies acceptance of all the rules. Failure to comply with the entry requirements willresult in disqualification.
- If you are entering by post, please do NOT send SAEs for results of winners. Details will be posted on this website.
- If you are entering by post PLEASE do NOT staple your work.
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