Black Eyes Publishing UK in conjunction with the Gloucestershire Poetry Society                 

2022 Open Poetry Competition Results

Judged by Tom Sastry

Long shortlist compiled by Josephine Lay (Director of Operations for the Gloucestershire Poetry Society & Editor for Black Eyes Publishing UK).

Winners

1st Prize:           A brew of tea                by Scott Elder

2nd Prize:          Lot’s wife                      by Anne Symons

3rd Prize:          Sharpshooter              by Chloë Jacquet

Commended

Vermeer’s The Concert              by Isabella Mead

Raising Chicago                         by Paul Francis

Also Shortlisted

Kasim                                       by David Hale

Portrait of Lorena Bobbit         by Hanna Teasdale

The last frost fair                       by Keith Chandler

Tinkers at Slieve Breagh, 1962   by Tim Dwyer

The Gloucestershire Poetry Society Friendship Prize

Judged by Josephine Lay

Sharpshooter        by Chloë Jacquet

Commended

A Different Perspective        by Emma Lord

Scrimshaw                            by Laura Grevel

Many thanks to Tom Sastry the judge of this years Open Poetry Competition.

Hera Lindsay Bird calls Tom Sastry a magician of deadpan. He has just published the eagerly awaited You have no normal country to return to - a darkly comic exploration of national identity and the power of modern myths. It follows A Man's House Catches Fire (2019) which was highly commended in the Forward Prize and shortlisted for the Seamus Heaney First Collection Prize. His pamphlet Complicity (2016) was a Poetry School Book of the Year and a Poetry Book Society pamphlet choice.

"Tom Sastry navigates the mysterious everyday...making friendships and love affairs new and strange"  - Carol Ann Duffy

Opportunities for new and experienced writers.

The Gloucestershire Poetry Society is closed for submissions - please check back here for updates, or via our Facebook and Twitter accounts.

Notes for submissions

Where possible, all results from Competitions and Submissions will be announced within one calendar months of the individual closing dates.

We ask for original work for all submissions.

We want new, fresh work and not work previously published, online or in print.

Ideally, we would ask that you avoid dual submissions. However, we do recognise having poems tied up awaiting a decision can be difficult for poets. So, should a poem you have submitted to us be subsequently placed or published elsewhere, we should be notified immediately and the poem withdrawn.

Please be advised that all entries must be submitted in English.