THE SHORTLIST
The Unloving Ground by
Aniqah Choudhri
Aniqah
Choudhri is a British Muslim writer from Manchester. She’s been published in
the Hippocrates Anthology for Poetry and Medicine, the Bristol Short
Story Anthology and the Lightship Anthology, as well as publications
like The Tribune magazine, The Independent and i-D magazine.
Judge’s comment:
‘A lush, gorgeous poem ‒ one that
indulges all of the senses, a heartbreaking poem, an unrequited love poem, a
poem for a home that does not want you, an entire country does not answer back.’
Hotel
Petroleum by Mark Fiddes
Mark
Fiddes’ second collection, Other Saints Are Available, was launched by
Live Canon last year. His first, The
Rainbow Factory, was published by Templar Poetry, following the success of
his award-winning pamphlet The Chelsea
Flower Show Massacre. He is a winner of the Oxford Brookes University
International Prize, the Ruskin Prize and the Dromineer Festival Prize. He was
placed third in the UK National Poetry Competition and runner-up in both the
Robert Graves and the Bridport Prize. His work has been published in Poetry
Review, POEM, the Irish Times and The Moth, among many
other titles. He lives and works in temporary Brexile between the Middle East,
Barcelona and London.
Judge’s comment:
‘Strikingly subversive, this poem is slick with
wit and dystopic. An episode of “Black Mirror” in poem form.’
Small Moon Curve by Roz
Goddard
Roz Goddard is a poet
and teacher and is currently training for ordination in the Triratna Buddhist
Order. She is a former poet laureate of Birmingham and has taught poetry
extensively in schools, prisons, libraries and literature festivals, as well as
being a mentor for The Poetry Society. Her most recent collection, Lost City,
was published by The Emma Press. Previous pamphlet collections include Spill
and The Sopranos Sonnets and Other Poems, which featured on BBC R3’s The
Verb.
Judge’s comment:
‘Gentle and tender, this poem is haunting, able
to explore a difficult, painful subject with exquisite grace and beauty.’
Chase
Street by Heather Treseler
Heather Treseler is
the author of Parturition, which received the Munster Literature
Centre’s Fool for Poetry international chapbook award and the Jean Pedrick
Chapbook Prize from the New England Poetry Club. Her work appears in Harvard
Review, PN Review, and Cincinnati Review, among other journals. Her
poem ‘Wildlife’ was chosen by Spencer Reece for the W. B. Yeats Prize, and her
poem ‘The Lucie Odes’ was selected for The
Missouri Review’s Jeffrey E. Smith Editors’ Prize. Her criticism appears in
the Los Angeles Review of Books, Boston Review and several scholarly
books about contemporary poetry. She is associate professor of English at
Worcester State University in Massachusetts, and a resident scholar at the
Brandeis Women’s Studies Research Center; her work has been supported by the
NEH and residencies at the Boston Athenaeum, T. S. Eliot House and the American
Academy of Arts and Sciences. She grew up in Boston and its surrounds, and her
mother’s family hails from Co. Cork.
Judge’s comment:
‘A beautifully written poem exploring
childhood, memory and motherhood. Opening stanza is deeply powerful. A deft
poem that lingers long after.’
All four
shortlisted poems appear in the spring issue of The Moth, available
to purchase here for just €7
(including postage anywhere in the world).THE FOLLOWING WERE
ALSO COMMENDED:
The
Wolves by Sylvie Baumgartel
Sylvie
Baumgartel has published two books of poetry with FSG: PINK (2021) and SONG
OF SONGS (2019). Her poems have appeared in The New Yorker, The
Paris Review, The Nation, The New York Review of Books,
The Financial Times, The Virginia Quarterly Review, Harvard
Review, Subtropics, Raritan and elsewhere. Her work is
included in The Unprofessionals: New American Writing from The Paris Review (Penguin,
2015) and in The FSG Poetry Anthology (FSG, 2019). She lives in Santa
Fe, New Mexico.
Things
I Remember by Laurie Bolger
Laurie Bolger is a London based writer
& the founder of The Creative Writing Breakfast Club. Laurie
has written for major brands, charities & organisations. Her
first book, Box Rooms, featured at Glastonbury Festival,
the Royal Albert Hall, TATE, Sky Arts & BBC platforms. Laurie’s second
collection, Call Me Lady, is a collection of poems
celebrating the resilience of women,
autonomy, love & her working-class Irish heritage.
Birthday Hike with Intervention by Simon Costello
Simon Costello’s poetry appears in Bath Magg, The Stinging Fly, The Rialto, Magma, The Irish Times, The North, Poetry
Ireland Review, Rattle and The
Tangerine. In 2021 he was awarded 1st prize in The Rialto Nature and Place Poetry
Competition, shortlisted for The Bridport Prize, selected for the Poetry
Ireland Introductions and awarded a Literature Bursary Award from the Irish
Arts Council. He lives in Co. Offaly in Ireland.
Meeting
Memory on Mendocino Coast by Christina Hutchins
Christina Hutchins’ Tender the Maker won
the 2015 May Swenson Award (Utah State University Press). Her other books of
poetry are The Stranger Dissolves (Sixteen
Rivers Press, 2011), a finalist for the Lambda Poetry Award and Publishing
Triangle’s Audre Lorde Prize, and the chapbooks Radiantly We Inhabit the Air (Robin Becker Prize,
2011) and Collecting Light (Acacia
Books, 1999). Hutchins was the 2017 Dartmouth Poet in Residence at the
Frost Place in Franconia, NH, where she compiled most of what will be her next
book, Minor Alchemies.
Jasmine Ledesma is a writer based in
New York. Her work has appeared in or is set to appear in places such as Crazyhorse,
Rattle and [PANK] among others. Her work has been nominated for
Best of The Net and twice for the Pushcart Prize. She was named a Brooklyn
Poets fellow in 2021. Her novella Shrine was listed as a finalist for the Clay
Reynolds Novella Prize.
Lekki
Toll Gate 20th Oct 2022 by Daniella C Ndubuisi-Ike
Daniella Ndubuisi-Ike is a Nigerian student living in Nashville,
Tennessee. She loves dancing and hates saying goodbyes. Through her work, she
is interested in exploring the body as citizen versus outsider and how it
performs within black womanhood, queerness and perceived identity roles.
Development
Hell by Othuke Umukoro
Othuke Umukoro, Nigerian poet &
educator, is the winner of the 2021 Brunel International African Poetry
Prize. He was highly commended in the
2021 Winchester Poetry Prize. He tweets @Othuke__Umukoro
Go Mum! by
Anna Woodford
Anna Woodford is the author of five poetry books
and pamphlets: Changing Room (Salt, 2018), Birdhouse (Salt,
2010), Party Piece (Smith Doorstop, 2009), Trailer (Five
Leaves, 2008) and The Higgins’ Honeymoon (2003). She has won
an Authors’ Foundation Award, an Eric Gregory Award, a PBS recommendation, an
Arvon/Jerwood apprenticeship and two Northern Writers’ Awards. Her poetry has
been well reviewed in the TLS and Grazia among
others. She is a Royal Literary Fund Fellow at Newcastle University.
THE JUDGE
