Monday 1 August 2011

Result of the Frogmore Poetry Prize for 2011

THE FROGMORE POETRY PRIZE 2011

Announcement of the result of the Frogmore Poetry Prize for 2011, sponsored by the Frogmore Foundation and adjudicated by Tamar Yoseloff.

The Frogmore Poetry Prize for 2011 is awarded to Sharon Black of St André de Valborgne, France for the poem FIBONACCI PONDERS THE ORIGIN OF LIFE. She receives the sum of two hundred guineas and a two-year subscription to The Frogmore Papers.

The first runner-up is Lesley Saunders of Slough, Berkshire for the poem SMALT. She receives the sum of seventy-five guineas and a year’s subscription to The Frogmore Papers.

The joint second runners-up are Caroline Ashley of Summertown, Oxford for the poem THE GEOLOGIST’S WIDOW and Miles Cain of Heworth, York for the poem PHONE. They each receive the sum of twenty-five guineas and a year’s subscription to The Frogmore Papers.

Other poems shortlisted were:

MOUCHE VOLANTE Sharon Black

PEPPERMINT BLOOD Suzanna Fitzpatrick

HYDRO Joy Howard

FLOOD Kim Lasky

MORSELS Helen Overell

APHASIA Moya Pacey

2 comments:

Ros Barber said...

Not clear on the gender of Moya but otherwise, isn't it rather extraordinary that ALL the winners and all the other commendeds are women?

I wonder how many men entered in percentage terms i.e. whether there were just a lot of woman entrants.

Tammy said...

Hello Ros,

Actually, I'm assuming Miles Cain who came in joint second is a man (I happen to know Moya is a woman). It's interesting, because in the last competition I judged, two of the top three winners were men (although I was convinced that one of the winning poems was by a woman, and it wasn't). I had no idea when I chose my Frogmore shortlist that the poets would turn out to be nearly all women (although I had an idea that 'Phone' would be by a man, because of the subject, but that is a prejudice on my part -- why shouldn't a woman write a convincing poem set in a prison?)Hence the idea proposed by V.S Naipaul that you can tell the gender of the writer is false. Having said that, I'm very pleased there are so many women poets here (and some really outstanding poems) given the recent figures regarding the representation of women writers in literary magazines. I wonder how many more women would get into publications like the TLS if they were submitting anonymously?