Leading novelist and poet Helen Dunmore has won the National Poetry Competition. The £5,000 first prize was awarded for her poem ‘The Malarkey’.
Helen Dunmore first made her name as a poet. In recent years she has received international acclaim as a novelist with eleven works of fiction to her name. On hearing she had won the National Poetry Competition she indicated that a new poetry collection could be on the horizon: "I’ve written very few poems over the past four years ... but now I have the feeling that there is the kernel of a new collection. It is a great boost to receive the prize – a confirmation."
‘The Malarkey’ is a haunting poem about loss, the cause of which is left open to the reader’s imagination. Judges Daljit Nagra, Ruth Padel and Neil Rollinson were captivated, as Padel explains: “This poem sprang out at me at once, on first read-through, from ten and a half thousand poems, because of the surprising focus it gave, linguistically, imaginatively and emotionally, on something that was not there. It was not showy. I found it completely arresting in its quietness; in the hidden strength of what it was saying so unobtrusively.”
Second prize in the National Poetry Competition was won by Ian Pindar , who receives £1,000 for his poem ‘Mrs Beltinska in the Bath’. His first collection of poetry, Emporium, will be published in 2011 and his second, Constellations, in 2012, both from Carcanet.
John Stammers took third prize (£500) with ‘Mr Punch in Soho’. He will publish his third collection, Interior Night, in April this year with Picador. |
