Vital Synz

what is the best of the country?
blinkbonny! airgold! thundergay!

tell us about last night?
well, we had a wee ferintosh and we lay on the quiraing. it was
pure strontian!

Edwin Morgan International Poetry Competition 2009

(back row, l-r: Ron Butlin, Paul Batchelor, David Kinloch; front row, l-r: Polly Clark, Emily Hasler, Sheenagh Pugh, Diana Hendry)

The prizewinners in the second Edwin Morgan International Poetry Competition were announced at the Edinburgh International Book Festival on 25th August, 2009. The competition, launched by Vital Synz and sponsored by the University of Strathclyde, is one of the richest poetry competitions in Britain and has the support of Edwin Morgan OBE, Scotland's national poet and one of the most prominent writers of the 20th century.  The prizes were presented by competition judges Ron Butlin and Polly Clark at a ceremony chaired by David Kinloch.

(1st Prize, £5000): Paul Batchelor - Comeuppance Paul was born in Northumberland.  In 2003 he received an Eric Gregory Award, and last summer his first collection appeared: The Sinking Road (Bloodaxe). It was shortlisted for the Jerwood-Aldeburgh First Collection Prize, and the Glen Dimplex Prize for Best First Collection. Paul wrote a PhD on Barry MacSweeney's poetry, and is a freelance reviewer, writing mainly for the Times and the Guardian. His website can be found at www.paulbatchelor.co.uk

 

 

(2nd Prize, £1000): Emily Hasler - Wet Season Emily was born in Felixstowe, Suffolk, studied at Warwick (English and Creative Writing BA, MA in Pan-Romanticisms) and now work as an intern at The Wordsworth Trust. Her poems have appeared in Poetry Salzburg, Red Ink and are forthcoming in Warwick Review and Horizon Review. In 2007 she came joint third in the Keats-Shelley Prize.

 

 

(3rd Prize, £500): Sheenagh Pugh - Travelling with Ashes Sheenagh has been most often associated with Wales, having lived there for 40 years. She has just moved to Shetland and is on record as sating that she is ‘more a poet of displacement than of place'. She has published a dozen collections of poems, two novels and a book on fan fiction. Her current collection is Long-Haul Travellers (Seren Books) which was shortlisted for the Roland Mathias Prize and longlisted for the Wales Book of the Year.) and her Later Selected Poems has also just come out from Seren.

 

(Runner-up, £50): Diana Hendry -  Father's Doors Diana's fourth and most recent collection of poems is Late Love & Other Whodunnits (Peterloo/Mariscat). She is particularly well known for her childrens' fiction. Her children's novel Harvey Angell (Red Fox) won a Whitbread Award and her adult short stories have been widely published and broadcast. She's worked as a journalist, English teacher and creative writing tutor. Following a year as writer-in-residence at Dumfries & Galloway Royal Infirmary, she moved to Edinburgh. She is currently a Royal Literary Fund Fellow attached to Edinburgh University.

 

(Runner-up, £50): Laura Solomon - Apocryphal Laura's published books are Black Light (Tandem Press, NZ, 2006), Nothing Lasting (Tandem Press, NZ, 2007), Alternative Medicine (Flame Books, UK, 2008), An Imitation of Life (Solidus, UK, 2009) and Instant Messages (Proverse Publishing, Hong Kong, 2010). She has won prizes in the Bridport, Ware Poets and Willesden Herald competitions. She currently lives in New Zealand.

 

Each of our judges is among the country's most distinctive voices in poetry:

Ron Butlin was born in 1949 in Edinburgh, where he now lives. Having worked variously as a footman, a male model and a barnacle scraper on Thames barges, he has become one of Scotland's most acclaimed writers. He was Writer in Residence at the University of Edinburgh (1982 and 1985), the Midlothian region (1989-90) and the Craigmillar Literacy Trust (1997-8). He was also appointed Scottish/Canadian Exchange Writing Fellow at the University of New Brunswick (1984-5), Writing Fellow at Stirling University (1993) and Novelist in Residence at the University of St Andrews (1998-9).His writings include poetry, libretti, plays and journalism and he is the author of three novels: The Sound of My Voice (1987, reissued 2002); Night Visits (1997); and Belonging (2006). He was awarded a Scottish Arts Council Book Award for his first collection of stories, The Tilting Room (1983), and for Ragtime in Unfamiliar Bars (1985), a collection of poetry. His book, Vivaldi and the Number 3 (2004), is acollection of tales about great composers, written from unusual and entertaining angles. A freelance journalist for the Sunday Herald, Ron Butlin lives in Edinburgh with his wife, the writer Regi Claire, and their dog. His latest collection of poetry is Without a Backward Glance: new and selected poems(2005).

 

Polly Clark's second collection Take Me With You (Bloodaxe, 2005) was a Poetry Book Society Choice. It was shortlisted for the TS Eliot Prize 2005. Her first book, Kiss, was published in 2000 and was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation. Her new collection, Farewell My Lovely, was recently published by Bloodaxe Books. Polly is Royal Literary Fund Fellow at Edinburgh University's department of Lifelong Learning 2008/2009.

 

 

 

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