Mslexia

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Mslexia Women's Poetry Competition

Mslexia Poetry Competition 2011

JUDGE: Jo Shapcott. Read her essay here.

1st Prize: The War Years by Jane Satterfield
2nd Prize: Oedema by Sarah Roby
3rd Prize: Archipelago by Jane McKie

20 other finalists: Josephine Abbott, Charlotte Ansell, Pat Borthwick, Penny Boxall, Angela Cleland, Jo Haslam, Joanna Hill, Selima Hill, Sarah Hopkins, Tess Jolly, Jane Lovell, Elsa Braekkan Payne, Eileen Pun, Angela Readman, Julia Roberts, Lesley Saunders, Rebecca Shepard, Sarah Stewart, Liz Twizzle and Abigail A Zammit.

All winning poems will appear in issue 51 of Mslexia, published in October 2011 and available to order: click here.

On winning...

"I’m a longtime admirer of Jo Shapcott, so it’s a special thrill to know she liked the poem." – Jane Satterfield

Read what 2011's winners say about their experience of the Mslexia Poetry competition.

Judge: Jo Shapcott

Read Jo's essay about the winners. Click here.

"Look up to catch eclipses, gold leaf, comets, / angels, chandeliers, out of the corner of your eye"
– from 'Of Mutability'

"What kind of poems do I admire? Not ones like my own. I like to be surprised, to read something unexpected. Many poets entering competitions think they stand a better chance if they put in poems they think have an echo of something the judge might have written. Not so in my case. And I want to read poems which are deft and intrinsically just as they should be but, if anything, run counter to trends and fashions, poems which, as Emily Dickinson famously said, make me feel as if the top of my head is taken off."

Jo Shapcott was born in London. Poems from her three award-winning collections, Electroplating the Baby (1988), Phrase Book (1992) and My Life Asleep (1998) are gathered in a selected poems, Her Book (2000). She has won a number of literary prizes including the Costa Book of the Year Award, the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best First Collection, the Forward Prize for Best Collection and the National Poetry Competition (twice). Tender Taxes, her versions of Rilke, was published in 2001; Of Mutability, winner of the Costa Book of the Year Award, in 2010. She is Professor of Creative Writing at Royal Holloway College, University of London, where she teaches on the MA in Creative Writing; and the current President of The Poetry Society.

Photo: Sarah Lee

EXCLUSIVE POETRY WRITING WORKSHOPS

"Beginning a new poem is about striking a spark in your mind."

Devised by Jane Holland, these specially-devised workshops will give you many ways into writing – whether you have a large back-catalogue to choose and edit from, or have never written a poem before.

6 Jun – Workshop 1: The Spark of a Poem

20 Jun – Workshop 2: Encouraging New Poems

4 July - Workshop 3: Preparing Your Poem for Submission

EIGHT years of the Mslexia Poetry Competition

• The War Years by Jane Satterfield (Jo Shapcott – 2011)
• The widower and his clothes by Margaret Livingston (Vicki Feaver – 2010)
• The Inland Waterways (IW) by Sarah Roby (Ruth Padel – 2009)
• A Song of Jean by Sibyl Ruth (Carol Ann Duffy – 2008)
• Too close by Ann Alexander (U A Fanthorpe and R V Bailey – 2007)
• For a plain man by Marianne Burton (Wendy Cope – 2006)
• Buffalo mozzarella by Polly Clark (Jo Shapcott – 2005)
• Women by Polly Clark (Selima Hill – 2004)