PRESS RELEASE Strictly embargoed until 8.10pm 28 March 2018

Jay Bernard wins the Ted Hughes Award for New Work in Poetry for Surge: Side A

Surge: Side A was praised by the judges for being “riveting... propelled by a strong internal momentum”

Ted Hughes Award judges Gillian Allnutt, Lemn Sissay and Sally Beamish have chosen Jay Bernard’s Surge: Side A (Speaking Volumes) as the latest winner of The Poetry Society’s prestigious prize.

Jay Bernard is from London and is the author of three poetry pamphlets: The Red and Yellow Nothing (Ink Sweat & Tears and Café Writers, 2016), English Breakfast (Math Paper Press, 2013), and Your Sign is Cuckoo, Girl (Tall Lighthouse, 2008). Surge: Side A is a performance work investigating the New Cross Fire of 1981, in which thirteen young black people lost their lives in a defining moment in Black British history. It was produced by Speaking Volumes and was performed at the Roundhouse, London, as part of The Last Word Festival 2017.

Surge: Side A won Jay Bernard the 2017 £5,000 prize, which is funded by Carol Ann Duffy from her honararium as Poet Laureate.

Judge Sally Beamish said:

“An intensely personal relating of the New Cross massacre; powerful, lyrical and communicated with extraordinary intimacy. I was particularly struck by their drawing of a parallel between the struggle for validation in the black British community, and the poet’s own clarification of identity by transforming their body through surgery. The performances are riveting and the poems are propelled by a strong internal momentum.”

Gillian Allnutt said:

“How grateful I am for the honesty and vulnerability of Jay’s presence in the poems and in the performance of them.” Continues over

For further information The Poetry Society Page 1 of 5 Contact Marcus Stanton 22 Betterton Street, London WC2H 9BX Tel: 020 8617 0210, Mob: 07900 891287 Tel: 020 7420 9880 Fax: 020 7240 4818 Email: [email protected] www.poetrysociety.org.uk PRESS RELEASE ctd

Strictly embargoed until 8.10pm, 28 March 2018

Lemn Sissay said:

“The shocking truth about Jay Bernard is that many people may not have heard their unique, inspiring and powerful voice, until now.”

Jay Bernard has featured in numerous anthologies and magazines, including TEN: The New Wave and Out of Bounds: Black British Writers and Place. They were part of the original line-up for two Speaking Volumes Breaking Ground tours to the USA, showcasing the best Black British writers from the UK. Jay was Poet-in-Residence at the George Padmore Institute in 2016, out of which came the poems for their upcoming collection, Surge (2019). They are also film programmer at BFI Flare (London’s LGBT film festival).

The following poets were shortlisted for the award, for poetry presented or published in the UK during 2017:

Jay Bernard for Surge: Side A (Speaking Volumes) Caroline Bird for In These Days of Prohibition (Carcanet) Kayo Chingonyi for Kumukanda (Chatto) Inua Ellams for #afterhours (Nine Arches Press) Matthew Francis for The Mabinogi (Faber & Faber) Antony Owen for The Nagasaki Elder (V Press) Greta Stoddart for Who’s There? (BBC)

The Ted Hughes Award for New Work in Poetry, presented annually by The Poetry Society since 2009, celebrates the outstanding contributions made by poets to our cultural life, acknowledging the possibilities of poetry both on the page and beyond. The £5,000 prize is donated by Carol Ann Duffy, funded from the annual honorarium the Poet Laureate traditionally receives from HM The Queen.

The winner of the 2017 award was announced on 28 March 2018, at a reception at the Savile Club, London. Carol Ann Duffy presented Jay Bernard with their prize.

From Surge: Side A by Jay Bernard

Surge 1 I was so weak, I was sickened, I was grieved, I was sad, I was everything that’s bad –

my voice became the glass breaking in the heat

I was so sickened and so grieved

I was so weak – I called and no-one seemed to call with me no-one seemed to know or see what I had seen – Continues over

For further information The Poetry Society Page 2 of 5 Contact Marcus Stanton 22 Betterton Street, London WC2H 9BX Tel: 020 8617 0210, Mob: 07900 891287 Tel: 020 7420 9880 Fax: 020 7240 4818 Email: [email protected] www.poetrysociety.org.uk PRESS RELEASE ctd

Strictly embargoed until 8.10pm, 28 March 2018

I was so sickened and so grieved

and I said to the child I knew harboured in the fire – jump

Yvonne, jump Paul, jump –

I said, I called – jump

Yvonne, jump Paul, jump –

my voice it was so weak

– Paul, jump –

so sickened and so grieved

– ENDS –

MEDIA ENQUIRIES: for further information, images or to arrange interviews please contact: Marcus Stanton • Tel: 020 8617 0210 • Mob: 07900 891287 • Email: [email protected]

Notes to Editors

Ted Hughes Award judges

Gillian Allnutt Gillian Allnutt was born in London and lives in County Durham. Her collections Nantucket and the Angel and Lintel were both shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize. Poems from these collections are included in her Bloodaxe retrospective How the Bicycle Shone: New & Selected Poems (2007), which draws on six published books plus a new collection, Wolf Light, and was a Poetry Book Society Special Commendation. Her most recent collections, both from Bloodaxe, are indwelling (2013) and wake (2018). From 1983 to 1988 she was poetry editor of City Limits magazine. She won the Northern Rock Foundation Writer's Award in 2005, received a Cholmondeley Award in 2010, and was awarded the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry 2016 in February 2017. Photo: Phyllis Christopher.

Sally Beamish Sally Beamish was born in London, moving to Scotland in 1990 to develop her career as a composer. She has written for many internationally renowned soloists (including Håkan Hardenberger, John Harle, Branford Marsalis, Tabea Zimmermann, James Crabb, Dame Evelyn Glennie and Colin Currie), perfoms regularly as violist, pianist and narrator, and as a presenter and contributor on TV and radio. Her music is performed and broadcast internationally, and since 1999 she has been championed by the BIS label, who have recorded much of her work. In February 2012 Beamish was BBC Radio 3 Composer of the Week; and this was repeated in 2015. Her works have been widely performed and awarded including Reed Stanzas, which won a Royal Philharmonic Society Award; Flodden, which was shortlisted for both a Royal Philharmonic Society and a British Composer Award; and Spinal Chords, one of the PRS 20x12 Olympic commissions. For the Shakespeare centenary, A Shakespeare Masque was premiered at Stratford by Ex Cathedra, with text by poet laureate Carol Ann Duffy. Her second ballet, The Little Mermaid, with choreographer David Nixon, for Northern Ballet, toured the UK in 2017/18. At present Sally Beamish is composer-in-residence with the Academy of St Martin-in-the-Fields. Sally Beamish is the recipient of an honorary doctorate from the University of Glasgow, a Creative Scotland Award, and a Paul Hamlyn Award. She was recently made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. With composer Alasdair Nicolson, Sally Beamish co-directs the annual St. Magnus Composers’ Course in Orkney. Her music is published by Edition Peters and by Norsk Musikforlag. Photo: Ashley Coombes.

Continues over

For further information The Poetry Society Page 3 of 5 Contact Marcus Stanton 22 Betterton Street, London WC2H 9BX Tel: 020 8617 0210, Mob: 07900 891287 Tel: 020 7420 9880 Fax: 020 7240 4818 Email: [email protected] www.poetrysociety.org.uk PRESS RELEASE ctd

Strictly embargoed until 8.10pm, 28 March 2018

Lemn Sissay Lemn Sissay is the author of a series of collections of poetry, including his book of new and selected poems Gold from the Stone (2016). His sculpture poem ‘Gilt of Cain’ was unveiled by Bishop Desmond Tutu. He has also written plays for stage and BBC radio. He is the first poet to write for the London Olympics and received an MBE from the Queen for Services to Literature. He is associate artist at the . Photo: Hamish Brown.

Ted Hughes Award shortlisted poets

Jay Bernard Jay Bernard is from London and works as a writer and film programmer at BFI Flare (London’s LGBT film festival). They are the author of three pamphlets, The Red and Yellow Nothing (2016), English Breakfast (2013), and Your Sign is Cuckoo, Girl (2008), and have been featured in numerous anthologies and magazines, including TEN: The New Wave and Out of Bounds: Black British Writers and Place. They were part of the original line-up for two Speaking Volumes Breaking Ground tours to the USA, showcasing the best Black British writers from the UK. Jay was Poet-in-Residence at the George Padmore Institute in 2016, out of which came the poems for their upcoming collection, Surge (2019), based on the New Cross Fire of 1981 in which fourteen young black people lost their lives.

Caroline Bird Caroline Bird is an award-winning poet. Her debut, Looking Through Letterboxes, was published when she was 15. She won a major Eric Gregory Award in 2002 and was shortlisted for the Geoffrey Dearmer Prize in 2001, and the Dylan Thomas Prize in 2008 and 2010. Her latest collection, In These Days of Prohibition, was shortlisted for the 2017 T.S. Eliot Prize. She was one of the five official poets at London Olympics 2012. She is also a playwright and in 2013, she was short-listed for Most Promising New Playwright at the Off-West-End Awards.

Kayo Chingonyi Kayo Chingonyi is a fellow of the Complete Works programme for diversity and quality in British Poetry and the author of two pamphlets, Some Bright Elegance (Salt, 2012) and The Colour of James Brown’s Scream (Akashic, 2016). His first full-length collection, Kumukanda, was published in 2017 by Chatto & Windus. He was awarded the Geoffrey Dearmer Prize and has completed residencies with , Cove Park, First Story, The Nuffield Council on Bioethics, and Royal Holloway University of London in partnership with Counterpoints Arts. He was editor of the Autumn 2016 edition of The Poetry Review and is poetry editor for The White Review. Kayo is also an emcee, producer, and DJ and regularly collaborates with musicians and composers both as a poet and a lyricist. He holds down a fortnightly show on Netil Radio called Keep It 100, a celebration of groove and feeling in music spanning from rockabilly ditties to afrobeats (with regular forays into R&B, Hip Hop, and House).

Inua Ellams Born in Nigeria, Inua Ellams is an award winning poet, playwright and founder of the Midnight Run. Identity, displacement and destiny are reccurring themes in his work in which he tries mixing the old with the new, the traditional with the contemporary. He has three pamphlets of poetry published by Flipped Eye, Akashic and several plays by Oberon. He won an Edinburgh Fringe First award for The 14th Tale, and The Live Canon Prize for Shame Is The Cape I Wear. He has been published in Best British Poetry (Salt) 2015, The Salt Book of Younger Poets 2012, Chorus (MTV Books), City State (Penned in the Margins) TEN: The New Wave (Bloodaxe), and in magazines such as The Poetry Review, Poetry Paper, Magma, Pen International, Wasafiri and Oxford Poetry.

Matthew Francis Matthew Francis is the author of five Faber collections of poetry, including The Mabinogi (2017), his retelling of the first four stories of the Welsh national epic. He has twice been shortlisted for the Forward Prize, and in 2004 was chosen as one of the Next Generation poets. He has also edited W.S. Graham’s New Collected Poems, and published a collection of short stories and two novels, the second of which, The Book of the Needle (Cinnamon Press), came out in 2014. Matthew Francis lives in West Wales and is Professor in Creative Writing at Aberystwyth University.

Antony Owen Antony Owen is from Coventry, England, with an interest in exploring the consequences of conflicts which he considers are largely overlooked. Author of five poetry collections, his The Nagasaki Elder (V.Press, 2017) was inspired by atomic bomb survivors’ accounts and growing up in Cold War Britain at the peak of nuclear proliferation. His poems have been translated into Japanese, Mandarin and Dutch. CND Peace Education (UK) selected Owen as one of their first national patrons in 2015, and his poems feature in a national CND peace education resource to schools. Owen is also a recipient of the 2016 Coventry Peace & Reconciliation Award for various peace projects.

Greta Stoddart Greta Stoddart was born in Oxfordshire in 1966. Her first collection At Home in the Dark (Anvil) was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection and won the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize in 2002. Her second book, Salvation Jane (Anvil), was shortlisted for the Costa Book Award Continues over

For further information The Poetry Society Page 4 of 5 Contact Marcus Stanton 22 Betterton Street, London WC2H 9BX Tel: 020 8617 0210, Mob: 07900 891287 Tel: 020 7420 9880 Fax: 020 7240 4818 Email: [email protected] www.poetrysociety.org.uk PRESS RELEASE ctd

Strictly embargoed until 8.10pm, 28 March 2018

2008. She was also shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best Individual Poem in 2012. Her third book, Alive Alive O (Bloodaxe, 2015), was shortlisted for the Roehampton Poetry Prize 2016. Her radio poem Who’s There? was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 2017 and was BBC Pick of the Week. She lives in Devon and teaches for the Poetry School and the Arvon Foundation.

Previous winners of the Ted Hughes Award

2016 Hollie McNish for her book Nobody Told Me (Blackfriars) 2015 David Morley for his book The Invisible Gift: Selected Poems (Carcanet) 2014 Andrew Motion for his radio performance Coming Home (produced by Melissa Fitzgerald of Blakeway and originally broadcast on BBC Radio 4) 2013 Maggie Sawkins for her performance Zones of Avoidance (directed by Mark C Hewitt and originally performed at Portsmouth Bookfest) 2012 Kate Tempest for her spoken word story Brand New Ancients (produced in partnership with Battersea Arts Centre) 2011 Lavinia Greenlaw for her sound work Audio Obscura (produced with Artangel and Manchester International Festival) 2010 Kaite O’Reilly for her verse translation of Aeschylus’ The Persians (National Theatre Wales production). 2009 Alice Oswald for her book Weeds and Wild Flowers (Faber & Faber) with accompanying etchings by Jessica Greenman.

The National Poetry Competition

Established in 1978, the Poetry Society’s National Poetry Competition is one of the world’s biggest and most prestigious poetry contests. There are three winners and seven commendations annually. Winners include both established and emerging poets, and for many the prize has proved an important career milestone. Previous winners include the current UK Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy, Tony Harrison, Ruth Padel, Philip Gross and Jo Shapcott.

The Poetry Society

The Poetry Society was founded in 1909 to promote a “more general recognition and appreciation of poetry”. Since then, it has grown into one of Britain’s most dynamic arts organisations, representing British poetry both nationally and internationally. With innovative education and commissioning programmes and a packed calendar of performances, readings and competitions, The Poetry Society champions poetry for all ages. It publishes the magazine The Poetry Review, and runs major talent development initiatives in poetry, such as the National Poetry Competition and the Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award. www.poetrysociety.org.uk

Ted Hughes Award Logo

The logo for the Ted Hughes Award was designed by David Carroll of David Carroll & Co (www.davidcarrollandco.com) and uses the iconic image of Crow by Leonard Baskin. The image was used originally on the cover of Crow: From the Life and Songs of the Crow by Ted Hughes (Faber & Faber, 1970) and is reproduced by kind permission of Lisa Baskin and the Estate of Leonard Baskin, © Estate of Leonard Baskin.

For further information The Poetry Society Page 5 of 5 Contact Marcus Stanton 22 Betterton Street, London WC2H 9BX Tel: 020 8617 0210, Mob: 07900 891287 Tel: 020 7420 9880 Fax: 020 7240 4818 Email: [email protected] www.poetrysociety.org.uk