| London Poetry Award 2012 |
The London Awards for Art and Performance is the country's most expansive awards and recognises artists and performers across many art-forms. Each is presented to an individual or team who have made an outstanding contribution to their art form.
Who better than the nominees themselves to judge each category. We'll be asking nominees in each of the categories to pick their top artist/s and from that we'll arrive at the shortlist and award winner who will receive the trophy. The shortlist and winner will be announced at the Presentation Ceremony in June.
There will also be a public vote, where anyone can vote online. However, this will only be taken into account if there's a tie in the nominee votes.
Long list in competition (click on title for more) - nominations: 16
London Poetry Award Nomination Wendy Cope: ‘Cope goes - gently, gently and ever so charmingly - for the jugular of the soul, opening up a dialogue about things we typically find tough to talk about’
Alice Stride · Facebook · Twitter · Email · Feb 16
London Poetry Award Nomination Derek Mahon: '[on Raw Material] .. there are numerous welcome surprises in the poets assembled here, including a section from the Chinese, some Pushkin, Ibsen and Quevedo, and a scattering of Congolese poets... Modern translators exist somewhere on a spectrum between stony fidelity (Nabokov's Onegin) or freer versioning (Lowell's Imitations), but Mahon lays claim to both.'
Venetia Twigg · Facebook · Twitter · Email · Feb 08
London Poetry Award Nomination John Burnside: '[on Black Cat Bone] It's an eerily beautiful collection, that reflects on the power of poetry and the impotence of mankind in the face of an impersonal universe – ‘this is the grief our stories prepared us for’ comes from what must surely be one of the best poems ever written, the haunting and elegiac Neoclassical.'
Venetia Twigg · Facebook · Twitter · Email · Feb 08
London Poetry Award Nomination Dean Atta: '.. one of the leading lights in London's poetry scene. His powerful reflections on race, identity and sexuality have won him recognition from BBC Radio, Channel 4 and the Tate Britain - not to mention a formidable reputation on the spoken word circuit.'
Venetia Twigg · Facebook · Twitter · Email · Jan 16
London Poetry Award Nomination Clare Holtham: 'Her poems' rhythms mimic the energy of the landscapes she encountered; they echo the sea in Istanbul ‘running up under the planks of the old Galata bridge’ and ‘the tide of people, the small boats pecking at the shore.’ You can almost smell the ‘Bazar in Herat’ in these pages.'
Shadi Hamta · Facebook · Twitter · Email · Jan 12
London Poetry Award Nomination Andrew Spragg: 'Ranging from ocean to dry-land pub, prairie to outer space, this book's good-humoured restlessness provokes us to think about relations between self and other. Andrew Spragg is a poet who can love; this book is in love with language without losing a grip on the world.'
Venetia Twigg · Facebook · Twitter · Email · Jan 09
London Poetry Award Nomination Sean O’Brien: 'With each new collection, O'Brien's imaginative reach has grown, making him impossible to pin down. Even in as elegiac a volume as this one, he finds room for jokes - "A line of Nietzsche turns to three of coke"’
Venetia Twigg · Facebook · Twitter · Email · Dec 30
London Poetry Award nomination Tiffany Atkinson: 'Like [pre-Christian latin poet] Catullus, Atkinson's voices worry about food and drink, sex and celibacy, love and jobs, children, childlessness, money and old age – all the usual things, in fact, though knowing they're the usual things is part of the problem: “like, aren't we so ironic these days / lucky us."'
Venetia Twigg · Facebook · Twitter · Email · Dec 18
London Poetry Award nomination Simon Armitage: The Guardian: "The poem throws off all vestiges of chivalry and revels instead in grinding descriptions of medieval warfare at its bloodiest."
Venetia Twigg · Facebook · Twitter · Email · Dec 14
London Poetry Award nomination Alice Oswald: 'She has truly made, to borrow a phrase from Stephen Spender, a “miniature Iliad ”, taut, fluid and graceful.'
Venetia Twigg · Facebook · Twitter · Email · Dec 07
London Poetry Award nomination Jarvis Cocker: '.. the bard of resistance and revenge.'
David Knight · Facebook · Twitter · Email · Dec 05
London Poetry Award nomination Rachael Boast: '.. poems often deploy startling description and resonant metaphor and simile.'
Shadi Hamta · Facebook · Twitter · Email · Nov 28
London Poetry Nomination Lavinia Greenlaw: ‘.. known for her flawless aesthetic and The Casual Perfect highlights her capacity for binding metaphor with striking image.’
Shadi Hamta · Facebook · Twitter · Email · Nov 27
London Poetry Award Nomination Judith Wilkinson: 'These haunting monologues expand our understanding of the power of the voice in poetry.'
Venetia Twigg · Facebook · Twitter · Email · Nov 11
