2012 POETS' PAGE

FIRST PRIZE: FRANCES GALLEYMORE

Frances was born in north London and grew up on the south coast, returning to London at twenty-one to become a full time writer. She has many television dramas to her name, and her first novel was published when she was in her early twenties. Five other novels followed, most recently in 2011 with Veritas: Finding the Goddess. In 2007 Frances fell in love with poetry. She now writes poems almost to the exclusion of everything else, and her poetry has appeared in magazines and anthologies. Her website is  www.francesgalleymore.com .

  

SECOND PRIZE: JOHN RICHARDSON

John is a founder member of Swindon’s BlueGatePoets and Writers' Cafe. He regularly participates in poetry readings, review groups, gives workshops. He has managed and presented the Marlborough Literature Festival's poetry cafe forseveral years. John publishes a successful, international, on-line e-zine, the IMPpress which specialises in bringing together poetry and art as ekphrasis. In his spare time his alter ego Jay Arr writes poetry and designs websites. His own website can be found at www.imppress.co.uk.

THIRD PRIZE: NJ HYNES

“I've played around with words for as long as I can remember, and was once banned from my sisters' room for waking up early and telling them stories while they tried to sleep. I've pursued poetry over the past decade through Arvon courses, the Poetry Schoolin London and eventually an MA in Creative and Life Writing at Goldsmiths in 2010. My professional work has often centred on words, whether journalism, non-fiction editing or book production, but most of my hobbies - music, photography, dance, snail hunting - are resolutely nonverbal.”

 COMMENDED POETS: 

DAVID LUKENS has lived in Wootton Bassett since before it was Royal, and has worked in business and project management. After attending a short course on creative writing run by the Swindon Festival of Literature, he began writing some poetry and this is the first competition he has entered. He has written novels for teenagers, one of which – Going Too Far - is now available as an e-book on Amazon.

EUAN TAIT was born in 1968 in Berlin, the second son of a Scottish soldier and a Nairobi-born book editor. He studied English at HullUniversity, and completed an MA in Creative Writing in 2006 at Manchester Metropolitan University. He worked with people with learning disabilities for twenty years, supporting them in their homes and work places, and is now a trainer and retreat leader in a conference centre in the West of England. He is a classical doublebass player and singer. He has had poetry, essays and short stories published in Bête Noire, South, Abraxas, Envoi and Obsessed with Pipework, and was shortlisted in 2008 for the Poetry Business’pamphlet competition. In 2011 was commissioned by St. Bartholomew’s Wootton Bassett to write a hymn for the launch service of the town’s new name, Royal Wootton Bassett. In 2007, his Choral Song was commissioned by Bath Choral Society, and he has had the libretto for a major choral work, Unfinished Remembering, commissioned by Birmingham Bach Choir, for music by Paul Spicer, which is due for performance in July 2014 (details at the Birmingham Bach Choir’s website, http://www.birmingham.bachchoir.com/concerts/new-commission.html).

WENDY KLEIN, a former drama and English student at the University of Utah and San Francisco, worked as a social worker (1983), then a family and couples psychotherapist (1992) before pursuing writing seriously.She completed the Undergraduate Diploma in Creative Writing at Oxford University in 2000, and the Post Graduate Diploma in Modern and Contemporary Poetry in English at Oxford Brookes University in 2006. Her only novel, Listening for Nightingales, was published in 2002, after which time she has concentrated on poetry, consolidated by a year’s course in‘Versification’ at the Poetry School. Her work is published in journals and magazines including Mslexia, The Jewish Quarterly, Magma, Smiths Knoll, Poetry Nottingham, The Interpreter's House, The River Thames in Verse and  Envoi.
Portrait by Ray Hedger

Her first poetry collection, Cuba in the Blood, was published by Cinnamon Press in February 2009. She has had many commended poems in competition anthologies including Blinking Eye, Cinnamon Press and Vision On 2003. A member of BlueGate Poets, she is a Troubadour regular and featured in a New Voices event (May 2005) along with being a monthly reader at ‘Poets’ Café’, Reading, and a member for 6 years of Susan Utting’s weekly poetry group in Reading.

She is a passionate believer in the curative powers of dogs, bellydancing, and reading poetry out loud. She hopes someone will humanely destroy her if she ceases to be able to enjoy these pleasures. Find out more at http://www.wendyklein.co.uk/ .

 JULIA DEAKIN was born in Nuneaton and teaches at Bradford University. 'The Half-Mile-High Club' was a Poetry Business Competition winner and her first collection, Without a Dog, appeared in 2008. Widely published and broadcast, she has read on 'Poetry Please' and won several first prizes, including four last year.

‘The Half-Mile-High Club’ http://www.happenstancepress.com/  .

Without a Dog  http://www.graftpoetry.co.uk/withoutadog.htm .