All winners of the current competition will be announced on this page with links to all our previous poetry competition winners, specially commended entries and judges comments.

Congratulations to Sheila Aldous – winner of the 2020 competition!

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The 2020 Competition

1^st Prize       The Debt Due – Sheila Aldous (Devon, England)

Our 2020 winner

Sheila Aldous is a North London girl with Devon in her soul. Living on the banks of the River Teign she is inspired by life generally, but also the natural landscape, river life, local history and love & loss.  Her first collection, Paper Boats, the Burning of Teignmouth and Shaldon 1690, was published by Indigo Dreams. Sheila has an MA in Creative Writing from Exeter University. She has won several poetry and writing competitions: the Yeovil Prize, the NAWG, Riptide Journal and Happenstance 20. She was shortlisted in the Bridport prize 2018 and has been placed in others. Her second collection, a chapbook Patterns of All Made Things, is due to be published by Hen Run, an imprint of Grey Hen Press.

2^nd Prize     To Paul Celan – Linda M James (Canterbury, England)

Linda M James is a Kent-based writer and creative writing tutor. She has published four novels and has finished a fifth called The Vienna Connection. This novel is an intriguing story of lost identity which moves location from America, Vienna and Switzerland before and after WW 2. In the future, she intends writing many more novels and screenplays. More here.

3^rd Prize      Unscythed – John Gallas (Markfield, England)

John Gallas is a New Zealand born poet who was Joint Winner of the Indigo Dreams Pamphlet Prize in 2016 and was also the St Magnus International Festival poet in the same year. After studying at the University of Otago he won a Commonwealth Scholarship to Merton College, Oxford to study Medieval English Literature and Old Icelandic and has since lived and worked in York, Liverpool and various other locations as a bottlewasher, archaeologist and teacher. The Little Sublime Comedy is his tenth Carcanet Press collection. More here.

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Highly Commended

4^th        Hidden Prey – Sheila Aldous, Devon, England

5^th        Listen to Me I am Odile – Judith Drazin, Bristol

6^th        Cell – Helen Cook, Maesllyn, Wales

7^th        Circumnavigation – Sharon Black, France

8^th        A Kind of Music – Isobel Thrilling, Skipton, England

9^th        Total Immersion – Konstandinos Mahoney, London, England

10^th      Mother Goddess of Netherby – Susan Szekely, Shipley, England

11^th       Moths – Sheila Aldous, Devon, England

12^th      In the Gents at Graig Y Nos Visitor Centre – Phil Coleman, Pontardawe, Wales

13^th      Delft – Tanya Parker, York, England

14^th      The Prettiest House in the Street – Rebecca Palmer, Christchurch, NZ

15^th      A nut roast arrived – Simon Maddrell, Brighton & Hove, England

16^th      Lizzie Pinches (Grandmother’s Skates) – Chris Kinsey, Newtown, Wales

17^th      Welsh bamboo – Mike Pullman, Hathersage, England

18^th      Qasida in time slowed to the rhythm of cats – Dena Fakhro, London, England

19^th      Chosen by the Sea – Jolie Marchant, Coleford, England

20^th      Large hotel – Robin Muers, Rugby, England

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Results were announced on our web site, Facebook Group and Twitter on Monday 20th July, 2020.  We have also informed the UK national press, Literature Wales, Pontypridd Observer and associated district newspapers, SW Echo, the Western Mail, BBC Wales and RCTCBC as well as many organisations on our mailing list. Thanks to Sally Spedding for judging this years competition, and thanks also to all those who entered and look forward to reading your work next year.

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Organiser comment:
Since the start of the contest, back in 2007 we’ve always felt it important to pick out as many poets as we can for praise.  We’ve been criticised over the years for having a 18^th, 19^th and 20^th place etc.  All I can say is that if one of my poems was picked 20^th in such a competitive contest I’d be thrilled.  This year is no exception and in fact our judge, Sally Spedding, felt that the quality of poems submitted this year was so good that she has also singled out a further five poems / poets that deserve a mention.  They are as follows:

BONEYARD – Jennifer Watson

SUMMERLAND – Chrissy Banks

THE SPEED OF ICE – Partridge Boswell

PONTYPRIDD – Jeanne Ceridwen Christie

FROM ST. MARTHA’S HILL – Lizzie Ballagher

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Special mentions:
In addition Sally also liked the following poems / poets, who also deserve a mention.  In no particular order they are as follows:

In memory of my father: upholsterer – Philip Dunn

The derelict farm – Barry Norris

Stallion – Kevin Smith

A recipe for rewilding – Kathy Miles

As the Rev Nicholas might have thought of chocolate – L A Watt

The headmaster, circa 1955 – Judith Drazin

When the trees were still dangerous – Paul Nash

The Facebook of Faiyum – Partridge Boswell

Mirror my lust – Rose Hinton

Alley days – Chadleigh White

Calligraphy – Anne Connolly

Bottom left-hand corner – Rob Barnes

Star dust – Judith Drazin

Whose voice? – Anne Forest

Following behind – Michael Forester

Stars in jam jars – Christian Donovan

Life on the inside – Beverley Sutton

Dunnerholm – M R Peacock

Inversion layer – Jilly O’Brien

Carpathian rhapsody – Simon Tindale

Planting out – Susan Szekely

Ring of Brodgar – Diana Sanders

Picking blackberries – Anne McCrudden

Twenty-six – Rebecca Brown

The race – Val Ormrod

Gus – Jane Langan

On the bus with the ex – Gale Burns

Caitlin – Robin Daglish

Coffee houses – Lorna Liffen

The owl, the pussycat and the shark – Judie James

Quintet – Nora Bartley

Bereavement – Odette Short

The gamekeeper’s dogs – A F Paterson

Salt – Jennifer Watson

Residue – Mike Douse

Stillwatch – Jackie Biggs

Bardo – Scott Elder

Jane Eyre – Philip Dunn

Request stop – Claire Lynn

Gower Heritage Centre – Charlotte Sanna

Creirwy – Paul Home

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Judge’s Comments:

It has been a huge privilege to have once again been invited by Dave Lewis to adjudicate this year’s ever more prestigious and truly international Welsh Poetry Competition, with a record number of entries.  The main themes involved memories, family and relationships, trees, flowers, woodland, birds, the sea and its shores, death, dying, hospitals, lockdown and its consequences, journeys, doom, pregnancy and birth, recollections, self-examination, Aberfan and other places in Wales.  Other countries’ histories, too.  Save for one poem, there was a noticeable lack of humour, which is hardly surprising.  However, a veritable treasure hunt, with so many gems to choose from…

My criteria: Instead of merely chopped-up prose, I was looking for musicality, assonances and alliteration etc.  If rhyming, then subtle. Not everything spelled out, instead, leaving room for the imagination.  Not narcissistic and self-indulgent.  Too much interiority can be tedious.  Originality of subject matter and its treatment.  To be shown something I didn’t know or been aware of.  Interesting histories / countries / areas and revelations.  Injustice and betrayal.

1^st   THE DEBT DUE – Sheila Aldous

Inspired by Dylan Thomas’ visceral and moving poem ‘I Have Longed To Move Away’ first published by New Directions in 1935, this is an achingly empathic revelation of the then young poet’s need to break free from what he saw as entrapment between society’s conventions and what he believed to be ‘the lie’ supporting them. Despite his need to be more true to himself and spurn what he felt to be damaging, the conflicted Dylan wasn’t quite able to do this. And then in 1952 came his beloved father’s ‘betrayal’ by death.

All this is captured by another accomplished poet who, it seems, is almost haunting 5, Cwmdonkin Drive, privy to Dylan’s innermost thoughts and feelings. Whose last two lines say it all.

Knowing about the payment of the debt
Knowing about being born to die.

A tour de force and a worthy winner.

2^nd   TO PAUL CELAN – Linda James

Forever touching the edges
Of your words – their lack of answers –
their spoken silences.

Love in a tango of dark blue eyes.
In Poppies. In Remembrance.

The first five lines of this spare, but evocative, questioning poem, introduce us to a gifted man born in 1920 in Romania to German-speaking Jews, who wrote under a pseudonym and whose second poetry collection, Mohn und Gedaechtnis (Poppy and Memory) established his reputation. Then came the well-known ‘Fugue of Death’ opening with ‘Black milk of daybreak we drink it at evening we drink it at midday and morning we drink it at night’ before an unsparing account of life in the Nazi death camps where his parents were killed and he was interned until escaping. Despite a later successful academic career in Paris, married with a son, Paul Antschel (his real name) committed suicide in 1970.

This ‘tribute’ ends with:

Float me a second skin, Celan, so that
I sing in front of strangers – lighter
than the sky. Ballooned with words.      

A truly well-deserved runner-up.

3^rd   UNSCYTHED – John Gallas

By Paparahi Flat, just past the droving bridge,
A vasty field of uncut corn rattles, torn,
Sere and straggle-flapping, up to Bonner’s Ridge.

Straight in with a great title and vivid description of winter on New Zealand’s North Island where the last words of this fresh, beautifully observed location sum up the scene with the end of the fifth stanza before the next one.

Their green time gone, their salad-days long passed, they rise,
a little blankly, yes, a little like a crowd
achatter when the show is done and all the darkling
auditorium of earth an empty shroud.

A well-deserved third placing, for a poem, which showed me another world far away.

Sally Spedding, 2020

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Past Winners

Photograph by Andrew Davies, 2007

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To see lists of previous winners and read some of the winning poems, plus the judges’ comments use the links below:

The 2019 Competition

The 2018 Competition

The 2017 Competition

The 2016 Competition

The 2015 Competition

The 2014 Competition

The 2013 Competition

The 2012 Competition

The 2011 Competition

The 2010 Competition

The 2009 Competition

The 2008 Competition

The 2007 Competition

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See also our links page for details of other poetry web sites in Wales and beyond.

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