Prize news, and more!

2021 V. Press Prize for Poetry

V. Press is very very delighted to announce that the winner of the 2021 V. Press Prize for Poetry is ‘Creature without building’ by Ray Vincent-Mills, with ‘MIROH’ by Talis Johnson as a runner-up.

A shortlist of four anonymous manuscripts was sent over for this year’s prize by the University of Worcester creative writing team.

V. Press editor Sarah Leavesley said: “I really enjoyed reading this year’s shortlisted manuscripts for the V. Press Prize for Poetry, my congratulations to the writers on their work and crafting.  

“My winner is ‘Creature without building’, a strongly themed, hard-hitting and urgent selection of powerful poems, which don’t shy away from tackling difficult experiences. There is pain and there is violence, but there is also beauty. Striking lines, vibrant imagery, linguistic play and crafting make this an important portfolio that continues to resonate long after reading.

“MIROH also stood out to me as the runner-up because of its admirable range of form, combining recognisable contemporary dilemmas with folklore elements to create new narratives with haunting rhythms. A moving and thought-provoking selection.”

OTHER PRIZE NEWS

V. Press would like to congratulate V. Press poet Natalie Linh Bolderston for her shortlisting for this year's Forward Prize for Best Single Poem with her ‘Middle Name with Diacritics’ (National Poetry Competition).

We wish her luck for the awards ceremony and winner's announcement this weekend. 

Details of her V. Press poetry pamphlet, The Protection of Ghosts, can be found here.

V. Press is also to delighted to see several V. Press poets included in Poems of the Decade: An Anthology of the Forward Books of Poetry 2011-2020.

Congratulations to V. Press poets Nichola Deane and Sarah Doyle, and V. Press editor, Sarah James, who all have previously Forward Prize highly commended poems included in this anthology.

REVIEWS

May We All Be Artefacts

"Chloe Hanks creates strong rhythms in her pamphlet through the repetition of words and sounds as well as her use of form and rhyme. She uses these means to capture atmosphere, and I found it particularly interesting how these enhanced her ekphrastic poems." 

Sue Wallace-Shaddad, Sphinx, full review here.

More on the chapbook, a sample poem and ordering for May We All Be Artefacts can be found here.

To Boldly Go

"[...] This pamphlet grabs my imagination. [...] Martin Zarrop both records mankind’s achievements and connects them to the human spirit with witty observations and surreal imagery."

Maggie Mackay, Sphinx, full review here.

More on the chapbook, a sample poem and ordering for To Boldly Go can be found here.

Something so wild and new in this feeling

"[...]“Something so wild and new in this feeling”" takes Wordsworth’s words shared in private in her journal and brings them to life. [...] Doyle has done a successful job in selecting the phrases that demonstrate Wordsworth’s poetic sensibilities and crafting them into poems that work like a seam of light silvering the birches."

Emma Lee, full review here.

More on the chapbook, a sample poem and ordering for Something so wild and new in this feeling can be found here.