Welcome to our judges page.
Multi award-winning poet Kathy Miles has judged our 2024 competition.
Born in Liverpool, Kathy Miles is a poet and short story writer living in West Wales. Her fourth full collection of poetry, Bone House, was published by Indigo Dreams in October 2020, and her pamphlet Inside the Animal House by Rack Press in 2018. Her short stories have featured in magazines such as The Lonely Crowd, and in a recent anthology, Ugly as Sin and other clichés (Pentad Books, December 2020).
Kathy is a previous winner of the Bridport Prize, the Frogmore Poetry Prize as well as the Welsh Poetry Competition, Second Light, Penfro and Wells Literature Festival Poetry competitions, and her work appears widely in magazines and anthologies. She was also one of the winners in the international Poetry Book Awards in 2021.
She has appeared at the Cheltenham Online Poetry Festival and other events and festivals around the UK. She frequently runs poetry workshops, is a regular book reviewer, and a co-editor of The Lampeter Review.
Her new collection, Vanishing Point, published by Palewell Press is out now.
Note: Unlike some competitions where the judge never gets to see your hard work our judges read every poem submitted. We do NOT use any filter judges.
The poems will be judged anonymously to ensure a fair competition and unbiased result and winners will be announced on our website here as well as in the local and national press.
I can’t see any mention of the number of entries. The first thing you want to know, whether you are a winner or a loser, is what you were up against, a fact that the organisers of most competition (by no means only yours) fail to understand.
I don’t know any contests that tell you how many entries they got? But, we got 600+ 🙂
My first attempt at welsh verse.
Sut wyt ti?
Gwelaf eich colled
nid am eich bod yma mwyach
ond oherwydd yr ydych wedi
wedi mynd nawr dy fod yn fy meddwl yn unig
Ble wyt ti?
Clywaf eich llais bellach o fewn fy nghlustiau
Y tristwch yn atseinio yn fy penglog ac enaid
Pam yr ydych wedi mynd?
Pan mae eraill yn parhau hyd
Annheg yn rhoddwyd mwy o flynyddoedd
nag y ddau ohonom Rhoddwyd
Translation?
Good to see John Evans back again this year!! 🙂
Some good judges here, although it would be nice to see some new ones too. Who will judge next year?
Any suggestions?