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The Judges

Glyn Maxwell

"The best young poets remind me how to have no fear, how to make awe seem cool, how to know nothing again, like the best poets do. I simply know that we will find some born writers"          Glyn Maxwell

Glyn Maxwell is an established and critically-acclaimed poet, novelist and playwright.  His collection The Breakage (1998) was nominated for the T.S. Eliot Prize and The Nerve (2002) won the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize.  He has written a number of plays including Broken Journey (Time Out Critics' Choice), The Lifeblood, Anyroad and The Only Girl in the World. His radio play, Childminders, was broadcast on BBC Radio 3 in 2002. He has also written opera libretti, including The Girl of Sand  with composer Elena Langer, and a libretto based on Euripides' The Birds with composer Ed Hughes which performed at the City of London Festival 2005. Blue Burneau (1994), his first novel, was short listed for the Whitbread First Novel Award. He is currently adapting Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose for Moving Pictures Theatre Company. His latest poetry collection, Hide Now, was published in 2008, and shortlisted for the 2008 T. S. Eliot Prize and the 2009 Forward Poetry Prize (Best Poetry Collection of the Year).

Imtiaz Dharker

"It is always such a pleasure to see the Foyle Young Poets' anthology and over the years I have been excited by the quality of winners' poems, with their unexpected images and razor-sharp observation. This year I have the even greater pleasure of being a judge and I look forward to being surprised, as well as inundated with thousands of entries!"                          Imtiaz Dharker

                  

Imtiaz Dharker was born in Pakistan, raised in Glasgow, and now lives between London and Mumbai. She is the author of five poetry collections: Purdah and other poems (1988); Postcards from god (1997); I speak for the devil (2001); The terrorist at my table (2006); and Leaving Fingerprints (2009) (Bloodaxe). She works as a documentary film-maker in India, and is also an artist, having shown solo exhibitions in the UK, India and Hong Kong. Her work has been described by critic Bruce King as “consciously feminist, consciously political, consciously that of a multiple outsider, someone who knows her own mind, rather than someone full of doubt and liberal ironies”.