Poetry in the News: 2003

11 December 2003: MADRID, Spain - Chilean poet Gonzalo Rojas has won the Cervantes Prize, the Spanish-speaking world's top literary award, which carries a $110,000 cash prize.

27 November 2003: Benjamin Zephaniah writes in the Guardian about why he has turned down the offer to be nominated for an OBE in the New Year honours.

24 November 2003: Paul Scholes – he scores goals! If you can do better than that you might have a chance of winning the competition to find a "football Laureate", which was launched today. The Chant Laureate, sponsored by Barclaycard, will receive a £10,000 bursary to create chants that "capture the humour and emotion of football". Judges for the competition include Andrew Motion, Ian McMillan, Stuart Hall and Chris Moyles. .

13 November 2003: The shortlist for the 2003 Whitbread Poetry Award was announced. The four contenders are: Lavinia Greenlaw, Minsk (Faber); Jamie McKendrick, Ink Stone (Faber); Don Paterson, Landing Light (Faber); and Jean Sprackland, Hard Water (Cape). The winner will be announced on 7 January 2004. For more information visit www.whitbreadbookawards.co.uk

12 November 2003: Audio versions of National Poetry Day poems now available

4 November 2003: The Launceston-based poet Charles Causley has died at the age of 86. His poetry, which often made use of the traditional ballad form, was popular with both adults and children. Among his best known collections are Underneath the Water and the children's classic Figgie Hobbin (both published by Macmillan). He was awarded the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry in 1967. Obituaries appeared in the Independent and the Guardian.

28 October 2003: The first two editions of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales are being made available by online the British Library to mark the anniversary of his death. To access these editions please visit www.bl.uk

20 October 2003: The shortlist for the T. S. Eliot Prize 2003 has been announced by the Poetry Book Society. The ten books are: Billy Collins, Nine Horses (Picador); John F. Deane, Manhandling the Deity, (Carcanet); Ian Duhig, The Lammas Hireling (Picador); Lavinia Greenlaw, Minsk (Faber); Jamie McKendrick, Ink Stone (Faber); Bernard O'Donoghue, Outliving (Chatto); Don Paterson, Landing Light (Faber); Jacob Polley, The Brink (Picador); Christopher Reid, For and After (Faber), Jean Sprackland, Hard Water (Cape). The winner will be announced on 19 January 2004. For more information visit www.poetrybooks.co.uk

9 October 2003: The BBC's 'Poem for Britain' competition was won by Con Connell, an IT and management specialist, for his poem 'Harvest Time: A Needlework Map Commemorating the Millennium'. Second and third prizes went to Maggie Ward for 'Earnestly Seeking' and Ann Alexander for 'After all that'.

8 October 2003: Ciaran Carson won the Forward Prize for Best Collection for his book, Breaking News (Gallery Press). Judges Connie Bensley, Daisy Goodwin, Vona Groarke, Beth Orton and Peter Stothard commented: "The mosaic qualities of these deceptively spare poems . . . record the force of terror and beauty with surgical precision and lapidary skill". A B Jackson won the Felix Dennis Prize for Best First Collection for Fire Stations (Anvil) and Robert Minhinnick received the Tolman Cunard Prize for Best Single Poem 2003, for 'The Fox in the National Museum of Wales' (Poetry London).

8 October 2003: Patchwork Poem was named "Site of the Week" at Guardian Unlimited Books / News online. "For this year's National Poetry Day, Roger McGough is creating a "patchwork poem" about Britain. He has written the opening lines, now it is up to everybody else to complete it. You, too, can participate by submitting, on the Poetry Society's site, up to three lines about a special place of your choice. The finished poem, pieced together by McGough, will be ready to read by 4pm on Thursday October 9. In the meantime there is also a random patchwork poem generator on the site, using contributions already received."

23 September 2003: Bernardine Evaristo has received a fellowship of £74,974 from the National Endowment for Science Technology and the Arts (NESTA) to undertake research into the historical presence of black people in pre-15th Century Europe. She recently published a verse novel, The Emperor's Babe, about a Sudanese girl in Roman London. 

22 September 03: Corneliu M Popescu Prize Announced: The Corneliu M Popescu prize for European Poetry in Translation was won by David Constantine for his translation of Hans Magnus Enzensberger's Lighter than Air, published by Bloodaxe. He received his prize as part of the W G Sebald lecture at the South Bank Centre.

10 September 2003: Poetry Landmarks of Britain was named "Site of the Week" at Guardian Unlimited Books / News online. "a wonderfully simple, useful and visually appealing idea...Poetry landmarks is a project to map all things versicular across the country...plotted on an interactive map of Britain, searchable by region or category. There are already a number of listings on the map but they need your help to make it even more useful. What are you waiting for?"

5 September 2003: Peter Hay, founder of Two Rivers Press, died on 26 August. "Brave, foolhardy and bloody marvellous" is how Leo de Freitas, organiser of the National Art Library Illustration Awards, described Two Rivers Press, the eclectic publishing house. (Obituary by Adam Stout and Annabel Eatherley first published in the Independent on 5 September; see the website www.tworiverspress.com)

2 September 2003: 2003 WINNERS ANNOUNCED IN THE DAVOREN HANNA POETRY COMPETITION Judges Charles Simic and Matthew Sweeney awarded First prize to Colette Olney, Second prize to Reid Bush, Third prize to Elisabeth Murawski. Leanne O'Sullivan won the Emerging Irish Poets Prize. www.eason.ie for more details.

Week of 1 September 2003: The Poetry Landmarks of Britain campaign was discussed on BBC Regional Radio in Hereford and Worcestershire, Cumbria, Derby, Leicester, London, York, Lincolnshire, Swindon and Wiltshire.

29 August 2003: American poet and academic Louise Gluck has been chosen as the next U.S. poet laureate. Gluck (1943), who has published nine volumes of poetry and won numerous awards and prizes, including a Pulitzer Prize, will succeed current poet laureate Billy Collins.

28 August 2003: "San Francisco poet Lawrence Fixel has died (age 86). Although not so widely known as the Beat generation writers synonymous with San Francisco's literary history, Mr. Fixel was nevertheless an influential poet whose manuscripts, journals and letters appear alongside those of Lawrence Ferlinghetti and others at UC Berkeley's Bancroft Library." San Francisco Chronicle.

22 August 2003: Hephzibah Anderson of the Daily Mail wrote an article about the search for the nation's Poetry Landmarks as part of this year's tenth anniversary of National Poetry Day. [For more details on this campaign, see www.poetrysociety.org.uk/landmark.htm]

14 August 2003: This just in from Aldeburgh Poetry Trust: "Snape Maltings seats 800 and I believe there are less than 18 tickets left for the Poetry Prom this Saturday night! World famous for music, Snape Maltings Concert Hall will swap notes for words at its first ever Poetry Prom at 7.30pm on Saturday 16 August 2003. The evening will feature three of the most popular and accomplished international poet/performers: Scotland's Liz Lochhead, Thomas Lux from America, and Britain's patron saint of poetry Roger McGough." We think this is newsworthy! See here for more detail.

8 August 2003: Poet and scholar F T Prince died on 7 August at the age of 90. 'Soldiers Bathing', which he wrote in 1942, is one of the best known poems of the Second World War. A Collected appeared in 1993 from Carcanet. Last year, PN Review dedicated an issue to his work. Obituaries appeared in the Independent, the Guardian, the Telegraph and The Times.

August 2003: Poet and novelist Colin Mackay died in Edinburgh on 26 July. His first collection of poetry, Red Ice, appeared in 1987. In 1998, his sequence about Bosnia, Cold Night Lullaby, was published by Chapman. An obituary appeared in the Independent.

July 2003: Elaine Feinstein received a Wingate Scholarship (2003-04) to research & write a biography of the Russian Poet Anna Akhmatova.

15 July 2003: Alison Prince's poem, 'Spring', which appeared in the members' poems section of Poetry News last January, has been shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best Single Poem. Other contenders in this category (sponsored by Tolman Cunard) are: Judi Benson (Acumen), David Constantine (Dreamcatcher), Jean Harrison (The North) and Robert Minhinnick (Poetry London).

The shortlist for the £10,000 Best Collection prize is as follows: Ciaran Carson, Breaking News (The Gallery Press); Billy Collins, Nine Horses (Picador); Ian Duhig, The Lammas Hireling (Picador); Lavinia Greenlaw, Minsk (Faber); and Paul Muldoon, Moy Sand and Gravel (Faber). Ian Duhig's collection takes its title from his poem which won the National Poetry Competition in 2001.

The shortlist for the Best First Collection also features past Poetry Society award winners. Rhian Gallagher won third prize in the 2001 National Poetry Competition, and Sarah Wardle won the 1999 Geoffrey Dearmer Prize. The full shortlist (sponsored by Felix Dennis and the Forward Arts Foundation) is: Rhian Gallagher, Salt Water Creek (Enitharmon); A. B. Jackson, Fire Stations (Anvil Press); John McAuliffe, A Better Life (The Gallery Press); Jane Routh, Circumnavigation (Smith/Doorstop); and Sarah Wardle, Fields Away (Bloodaxe). Winners are announced on 8 October 2003, the eve of National Poetry Day.

8 July 2003: Kathleen Raine, poet, scholar, and founder of the Temenos Academy of Integral Studies, died on 6 July 2003. She was 95. A Collected is published by Harper Collins. Obituaries appeared in the Guardian and the Telegraph.

3 July 2003: Ken Smith, poet and former co-editor of Stand, died in London at the age of 64. A selected, Shed: poems, 1980-2001 was published in 2002 (Bloodaxe Books). Obituaries appeared in the Independent and the Guardian.

25 June 2003:Tim Liardet, Eva Salzman and Cliff Yates were awarded Arts Council of England Writers' Awards, worth £7,000 each. The annual awards are for published writers who have embarked on a new work.

11 June 2003: Paul Batchelor, Zoe Brigley, Olivia Cole, Sasha Dugdale, Jen Hadfield and Anna Woodford are this year's recipients of Eric Gregory Awards, given each year to poets under the age of 30 on the basis of a submitted collection. The poets will read a selection of their work at the Poetry Studio, 22 Betterton Street, Covent Garden, at 7.30pm on 12 June 2003 (introduced by Roddy Lumsden). This year's Cholmondeley Awards, which recognise the achievement and distinction of individual poets, were given to Ciaran Carson, Michael Donaghy, Lavinia Greenlaw and Jackie Kay. www.societyofauthors.org

10 June 2003: Crime writer's Pushkin steals £30,000 prize

A 63-year-old Oxford don won Britain's richest non-fiction prize yesterday with the first book he has written on his own subject: Russian literature. TJ Binyon took the £30,000 Samuel Johnson award with his biography, widely described as masterly, of the poet Pushkin. John Ezard in The Guardian

10 June 2003: Under the Moon & Over the Sea by John Agard and Grace Nichols (Walker Books) won the inaugural CLPE (Centre for Literacy in Primary Education) award for a book of poetry for children. www.clpe.co.uk

7 June 2003: Dominique de Villepin, France's foreign minister, has published a new book of poetry, Éloge des voleurs de feu. The book, published by Gallimard, is "a massive 824-page meditation on the role of the poet in the modern world", according to a report in The Guardian De Villepin has written various works of non-fiction, among which a political biography of Napoleon, and published several volumes of poetry. He thinks poetry and diplomacy perfect bedfellows, writes The Guardian, because they "both rely on the alchemy of paradox".

THE QUEEN'S GOLD MEDAL FOR POETRY 2003
THE FOLLOWING STATEMENT IS ISSUED BY THE PRESS SECRETARY TO HER MAJESTY THE QUEEN The Queen has been pleased to approve the award of Her Majesty's Gold Medal for Poetry for the year 2003 to Miss U. A. Fanthorpe. www.royal.gov.uk/output/Page2254.asp

1 May 2003: The latest poetry bestseller chart appeared in the Independent on 31 May, with Now We Are Sixty by Christopher Matthew at number 1. Andrew Motion's Public Property and Tom Paulin's The Invasion Handbook are at number 7 and number 9 respectively. Source: The Independent Magazine, 31 May 2003

1 May, 2003: The CLPE (Centre for Literacy in Primary Education) Poetry Award, for a book of poetry for children, shortlist has been announced. This comprises Einstein the Girl Who Hated Maths by John Agard (HodderWayland), Under the Moon and Over the Sea, edited by John Agard and Grace Nichols (Walker Books), Friendly Matches by Allan Ahlberg (Puffin), To Catch an Elephant by Gerard Benson (Smith/Doorstep Books), Hot Like Fire by Valerie Bloom (Bloomsbury), A Nestful of Stars by James Berry (Macmillan), Poems for Year 4 chosen by Pie Corbett (Macmillan), A Shame to Miss, Volume 2, chosen by Anne Fine (Corgi), Now You See Me, Now You… by Chrissie Gittins (Rabbit Hole Publications), Everest and Chips by Robert Hull (Oxford University Press), Wicked Poems edited by Roger McGough (Bloomsbury), Good Enough to Eat by Roger McGough (Puffin), The Wonder Dish by John Mole (Oxford University Press)

 

April 2003: NESTA (the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts), the organisation set up to support UK creativity and innovation, has awarded an Education award of £219,591 to the trAce Online Writing Centre for their Writers for the Future project, which aims to support and develop the burgeoning online writing sector.

15 April, 2003: The winners of the 2002 National Poetry Competition were announced at a prize-giving ceremony in London. First Prize went to Julia Copus; Second Prize to David Hart; third prize to Matthew Caley.

April, 2003: Paul Muldoon (President of the Poetry Society until Nov 2005) was awarded the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for his collection Moy Sand and Gravel. For more details, see http://www.pulitzer.org/year/2003/poetry/.

28 March 2003: The David Cohen British literature award for lifetime achievement, modelled on the French Prix Goncourt and awarded every two years, has this year been presented to novelist Dame Beryl Bainbridge and poet Thom Gunn, The Guardian reports. Gunn is the first poet to win the award.

 

27 March 2003: The Griffin Poetry Prize International Shortlist 2003 includes: Kathleen Jamie, Mr and Mrs Scotland are Dead: Poems 1980-1999 (Bloodaxe); Paul Muldoon, Moy sand and gravel (Farrar, Straus & Giroux); Gerald Stern, American Sonnets (W.W. Norton & Company); and C.D. Wright, Steal Away: selected and new poems, (Copper Canyon Press). Judges are Michael Longley, Sharon Olds and Sharon Thesen. The winners will be announced on June 12. For more information visit www.griffinpoetryprize.com.

20 March 2003: Poet (and former Poetry Society Council Chair and Treasurer) John Cotton died in Hemel Hempstead at age 78. He published two collections with Chatto and Windus and two others with Headland, and was represented in numerous anthologies for children. He was, with poet Ted Walker, founding editor of the poetry magazine Priapus.

March, 2003: A team of poets organised by the Poetry Society has won through to the knock-out stages of the new University Challenge concept: "The Professionals". The team, George Szirtes (captain), Roddy Lumsden, Ruth Padel and John Stammers, take on the likes of MPs, Meteorologists, Times Journalists, and Fellows of the Royal College of Psychiatrists. 250 teams applied for the competition and underwent two stage pre-selection tests. The poets team came out in the top 22. "We are keen to do well", said John Stammers, "and refute the popular misconception that poets are unworldly. But we'll take it one game at time." The programme will be screened on BBC2 at 8pm on 16th June.

25 February 2003: Echoes of past from web poets. "The explosion of anti-war poetry on the internet is to appear in print as one of the fastest books ever published. More than 10,000 poets, including big names such as Adrian Mitchell and Sean O'Brien, have composed verses in response to what they see as the war-mongering rhetoric of Britain and the US. Their works will be published in paperback next week as 100 Poets Against the War by Salt Publishing of Cambridge, just six weeks after an appeal was made for poems. The e-version of the book has already broken all British records with 48,000 copies downloaded. The most successful e-books released by British publishers usually sell only several hundred copies. Todd Swift, editor of the book and poetry editor of the British website nthposition.com, said that the response was unprecedented. "It is an amazing speed," he said. "Within 24 hours of putting out the appeal for poetry we had 350 poems. The total is now 1,000."" Full story by Jack Malvern at www.timesonline.co.uk

19 February, 2003: Anthology of Peace Poetry rushed out in three weeks. "In a literary response to the groundswell of public opinion against war in Iraq, the country's leading poetry publishers will rush out an anthology of peace verse today. Faber and Faber's 101 Poems Against War..." Full story by Christina Patterson at the Independent.

04 February, 2003: World Book Day is Thursday 6 March! Be sure to visit these websites: www.worldbookdayfestival.com and www.worldbookday.com. The Poetry Society celebrates with a Studio Poetry reading, featuring Leeds-based poet Ian Duhig and American poet Elizabeth Macklin.

30 January, 2003: "A poetry forum at the White House that was to be hosted by First Lady Laura Bush has been cancelled after some of the poets indicated they wanted to protest against the proposed attack on Iraq." Full story on Poetry International Web.

20 January, 2003: The T S Eliot Prize for the best collection of poetry published in 2002 was awarded to Alice Oswald's Dart.

9 January 2003: "In a rare step for a poet laureate, Andrew Motion today speaks out in his newest poem against the momentum towards a US-led invasion of Iraq using British forces who would be serving nominally under the Queen". The Guardian

8 January 2003: 2002 Whitbread Poetry Award went to Paul Farley for The Ice Age (Picador).

2 January 2003: William Cookson, founder and editor of the poetry magazine Agenda, died.