Dom Bury wins National Poetry Competition for his poem ‘The Opened Field’ Judges Hannah Lowe, Andrew McMillan and Pascale Petit praise the winning poem’s “mnemonic force” and describe it as a “neutron star of a poem compressed inside the restraining machinery of a sestina” PRESS RELEASE Dom Bury. Photo: Jenny Jacobs. Strictly embargoed until 7.30pm, 28 March 2018 Out of more than 13,000 poems entered for this year’s award, Dom Bury’s poem ‘The Opened Field’ has been chosen as the winner of the National Poetry Competition, winning him £5,000. Judges Hannah Lowe, Andrew McMillan and Pascale Pettit selected the winning poem from an astounding pool of entries from over 70 countries worldwide - maintaining the competition's position as one of the world's biggest international open poetry competitions for single poems. The darkly allegoric winning poem surrounds six boys in a field enacting a disturbing coming-of-age ritual, and is told with a driving rhythm and mantra-like repetitions. The poem interrogates themes of unchecked masculinity, exploring our destructive relationship with each other and with the natural world. The barbaric impulses enacted are interwoven to offer us a sombre and precisely wrought ecological and social fable for our times. (The poem appears on p. 6 of this release.) Pascale Petit commented: “‘The Opened Field’ is a neutron star of a poem compressed inside the restraining machinery of a sestina... I marvelled at the way I found yet another layer each time I returned to this poem and still thought I had not quite got to the bottom of it. As the weeks passed it would haunt me like a recurring dream. Reading it aloud at our judging meeting, I felt the hairs on the back of my neck rise. The poem’s mnemonic force and seriousness drew it to the top of the pile, to become our winner.” Continues over For further information The Poetry Society Page 1 of 6 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 7.30pm, 28 March 2018 Hannah Lowe said: “Dom Bury’s ‘The Opened Field’ stood out to the judges because of its remarkable use of the sestina form. It does what the best sestinas do - wears the form so lightly that you might not notice it – and simultaneously, it blends completely with its subject matter.” Andrew McMillan added: “A mastery of form combined with visceral and moving imagery – this is a sublime poem which pushes language to its limits, but does so effortlessly.” Dom Bury is from Devon, and his poems appear or are forthcoming in The Poetry Review, Poetry London, Poetry Ireland Review, Poetry Wales and Best British Poetry. He is the recipient of an Eric Gregory Award and a Jerwood/Arvon Mentorship. Dom has won first prize in the Magma Poetry Competition and second in the Resurgence Poetry Prize. Dom is not the only National Poetry Competition first prize winner from Devon. He follows in the footsteps of Roger Philip Dennis, who won first prize in the 2014 competition with ‘Corkscrew Hill Photo’. He describes the feeling of having won: “It is just such a rare and magical gift. The National Poetry Competition is without doubt the one competition that every poet dreams of winning but that no-one can actually conceive that they will. Every year, the list of names on the NPC longlist is just astounding.” Dom explains some of the thinking behind the poem: “I think that this is a poem that has a number of sources and antecedents. It certainly stems from my experience of initiation at school, playing sport at school and at University, from my time working as a Nanny, my recent environmental work and from what as a result have become my central pre-occupations. Namely the current state of the environment, patriarchy, and the relationship between the two.” Dom Bury becomes the winner of The Poetry Society’s 40th National Poetry Competition. Since it began in 1978 the competition has been an important milestone in the careers of many of today's leading poets, with previous winners including Helen Dunmore, Ruth Padel, Philip Gross, Carol Ann Duffy, Jo Shapcott and Tony Harrison. Awarding a total of £9,400 prize money annually, the competition recognises individual poems, previously unpublished, in an anonymised judging process. The judges only discover the identity of the winner after making their final decision. Nine other winners were also named, including Mary Jean Chan for her poem ‘The Window’ (2nd prize, £2,000), Momtaza Mehri for her poem ‘Oiled Legs Have Their Own Subtext’ (3rd prize, £1,000) and seven commended poets (£200 each): Peter Kahn, Jane Slavin, David Grubb, Joseph Butler, Robert Powell, Paul Talbot and Yvonne Reddick. Yvonne is the winner of the 2018 Peggy Poole Award, a new talent development scheme for poets based in the NW of England. Continues over For further information The Poetry Society Page 2 of 6 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 7.30pm, 28 March 2018 All the winning poems will be published on The Poetry Society’s website on 28 March at www.poetrysociety.org.uk/npc. The top three poems will be published in the Spring 2018 issue of The Poetry Review and there will be a celebratory event with some of the winners at the Ledbury Poetry Festival in July, as well as other events around the country over the coming year. The next National Poetry Competition opens in May. Entry forms will be available online at www.poetrysociety.org.uk/npc, where you can also sign up to the mailing list to be kept informed. The closing date is 31 October 2018. – 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 National Poetry Competition winners Dom Bury for ‘The Opened Field’ (The poem appears on p. 6 of this release) Dom Bury lives in Devon where he runs workshops on nature, ecopoetry and the emotional impact of climate change. Poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The Poetry Review, Poetry London, Poetry Ireland Review, Poetry Wales and Best British Poetry. He is the recipient of an Eric Gregory Award, a Jerwood/Arvon Mentorship and has been a winner of the Magma Poetry Prize and 2nd Prize in The Resurgence Ecopoetry Competition. Photo: Jenny Jacobs Mary Jean Chan for ‘The Window’ Mary Jean Chan is a poet, editor and academic from Hong Kong. Her debut pamphlet, A Hurry of English, is published by ignitionpress (2018), with a selection of work forthcoming in Carcanet’s New Poetries VII, and a debut collection forthcoming from Faber in 2019. She is the winner of the 2017 Anne Born Prize, and she was shortlisted for the 2017 Forward Prize for Best Single Poem. She is a Ledbury Emerging Poetry Critic and is co-editor of Oxford Poetry. Momtaza Mehri for ‘Oiled Legs Have Their Own Subtext’ Momtaza Mehri is a poet and essayist. Her work has been featured in Vogue, Poetry London, BBC Radio 4, BuzzFeed, Poetry Society of America and Real Life Mag. She is a Complete Works Fellow and winner of the 2017 Outspoken Page Poetry Prize. Her chapbook sugah lump prayer was published in 2017. She also edits Diaspora Drama, a digital platform showcasing international immigrant art. Seven poets were commended in this year’s National Poetry Competition. They were: Peter Kahn for ‘Til It’s Gone’ Peter is a founding member of Malika’s Kitchen and co-founder of the London Teenage Poetry Slam. As a Visiting Fellow at Goldsmiths, University of London Peter founded the Spoken Word Education Training Programme. Jane Slavin for ‘Perishable Goods’ Jane is also from Devon and her work has appeared in Poetry24 and Shooter; she performs regularly at local events and belongs to a Poetry School Group. Continues over For further information The Poetry Society Page 3 of 6 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 7.30pm, 28 March 2018 David Grubb for ‘Inventions at the Asylum’ David’s recent poetry collections have been published by Stride, Salt, Shearsman and Like This Press. His short story collection was published by Root Creations. Joseph Butler for ‘AngelBat’ Joseph is a blacksmith and boatbuilder. More recently he trained as a nurse and cares for patients in an Oxfordshire hospice. Robert Powell for ‘The Telling’ Robert is shortly to have his third collection of poetry, Riverain, published by Valley Press. Paul Talbot for ‘Danube 1994’ Paul has recently returned to writing poetry. He has trained as a linguist, archaeologist, detective , intelligence analyst, and chef. He now works in public service. Yvonne Reddick for ‘Muirburn’ Yvonne’s pamphlet Translating Mountains won the 2017 Mslexia Pamphlet Competition. Yvonne won a Northern Writers’ Award in 2016 and was a Hawthornden Fellow in 2017. Yvonne is the winner of the 2018 Peggy Poole Award – launched alongside the 2017 National Poetry Competition, the Peggy Poole Award is a new talent development scheme for poets based in the North West of England.