QUICKLINKS
:: Prizewinners :: Judges' shortlist :: Judges' comments :: Press cuttings ::
We are delighted to announce the 2009 Basil Bunting Poetry Award winners.
Click on the poem's title to read the judges' comments and on the poet's name to hear a reading of the poem.
* denotes a reading by the author
** denotes a reading by Linda France
Click [here] down to download the poems
You can read the 6 prizewinners' poems by selecting from the links below or you can view the judges' selected shortlist by following this link.
PRESS
Read what the Newcastle Journal had to say about the award. [Follow this link]
Read what the Hexham Courant had to say about the award. [Follow this link]
We would like to thank everyone who has supported the Inaugural
Winners were informed during the week beginning 30th November and the Awards ceremony took place at The Culture Lab at Newcastle University on 10th December.
The judges selected a first, second and third prize (and three commendations) and have prepared a shortlist which is now published here.
We are also delighted to announce that next year’s competition will be judged by Jo Shapcott. More details about next year will follow in due course.
Once again many thanks for your support. [top]
Judges' comments - Basil Bunting Poetry Award 2009
[Listen to the judges comments read by Sean O'Brien]
Prizewinning Poems
1st Prize -‘The Coat Cupboard’
This poem avoided the pitfalls of sentimentality and nostalgia, and in fact made its subject from avoiding them in favour of a careful, cumulative description of the afterlife of coats, shoes, keys, a lipstick, so that a sense of loss doesn’t have to name itself directly, while ‘things in themselves’ imply all that is gone beyond reach.
2nd Prize – ‘The Tower’
This is an immensely skilful recreation of a world where ballad, medieval romance and ritual obsession meet in what might be an illustration on a tarot card. The tone is elusive – witty, grim, resigned, scholarly and, in some odd way, dutiful.
3rd Prize – ‘A Lewis chess piece, her grievance
This poem too visits a strange and sharply-evoked world, though the view here is interior. The way chessboard and ‘real’ landscape flow into each other is intriguing; likewise the decided, peremptory tone, as of aristocratic fatalism.
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Commended Poems
‘The First Move’
It is pleasing to see a sonnet used to shape a poem’s argument. The language of octet and sestet is also neatly contrasted – clipped geopolitics offset by something more anonymous. A finely-wrought poem, refreshingly original in its soundplay and focus.
‘The Gull Man’
The narrator looms almost as large as his subject in this dramatic monologue that begins casually, then darkens into a strange apocryphal tale with a suggestion of Coleridge’s albatross beating its wings between the lines.
‘The Lifeboat’
An interesting poem in conspicuously plain language which offers a glimpse of a world at sea, where old protocols are challenged by a young woman who might, given the chance, choose love instead of war.
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General Comments
The better work among the entries was often ambitious in its themes and unusual enough to stand out from the less successful work. A recurrent subject seemed to be knowledge – its powers, limits and obligations. All the winning and commended poems evoked distinctive, credible worlds and told their stories in a confident but restrained tone. Some interesting poems amongst those shortlisted but not included in the final six, foundered on their own complexities, being unable to complete their own enquiries whether for want of an imaginative gear-change or lack of real formal control, or both. Most of the shortlisted poems were notable for their tension, a sense of menace or dislocation that added energy and suspense to their various concerns. Many presented a close-up view of things, rich in detail and the specific vocabulary such attention elicits.
The winning and commended poems, and many of the others given serious consideration, exhibit some understanding of the nature of form and shared technical assuredness, whilst being diverse in structure and ambition. The weaker material had usually failed to address form at all, and thus had few strategies for shaping a poem at the points where imagery faltered or narrative lost impetus. The judges would have liked to see more generally a greater control over language and form, more clarity of argument and narrative and a stronger sense of risk and urgency in the entries.
| 2009 Prizewinners | |
 First Prize - Dh Maitreyabandhu - The Coat Cupboard | downloads: 656 | type: pdf | size: 34 kB |
| Second Prize - Peter Bennet - The Tower | downloads: 382 | type: pdf | size: 19 kB |
| Third Prize - Jane Routh - A Lewis chess piece – her grievance | downloads: 289 | type: pdf | size: 16 kB |
| 2009 Commended by the judges | |
| Commended - Mike Barlow - The Lifeboat | downloads: 239 | type: pdf | size: 25 kB |
| Commended - Patrick Daly - The Gull Man | downloads: 254 | type: pdf | size: 14 kB |
| Commended - Gareth Prior - The First Move | downloads: 352 | type: pdf | size: 5 kB |