morphrog and Frogmores

The eleventh edition of morphrog, edited by Jeremy Page and Peter Stewart, is now live at http://www.morphrog.com/ and features poetry in the extreme from Nisha Bhakoo, John Brookes, Dane Cobain, Scott Elder, Allison Grayhurst, Antony Johae, Craig Kurtz, Jeffrey Loffman, Donal Mahoney, Paul Matthews, John Alwyine-Mosely, Diana Reed, David Romanda, Michelle Villanueva and Rob Yates.

September will see the publication of the 86^th edition of The Frogmore Papers, featuring all the poems shortlisted for this year’s Frogmore Poetry Prize, including winner Sarah Barr and runners-up Peter Marshall and Frances Corkey Thompson. The issue will also feature some of the last unpublished poems by Tom Duddy, who died in 2012.

Later in the autumn True Tales from the Old Hill, an anthology of life writing edited by Rachel Cole and Jeremy Page and published in collaboration with the Centre for Life History and Life Writing Research at the University of Sussex, will be launched. Further details will follow.

Sarah Barr wins Frogmore Prize 2015

The Frogmore Poetry Prize for 2015 has been awarded to Dorset poet Sarah Barr by adjudicator John McCullough. 

Of her Prize-winning poem McCullough says: 'January' uses form to create and complicate meaning in highly suggestive ways. The disjunctions between its stanzas evoke the sudden leaps of a mind actively thinking, the white spaces inviting us to imagine what's going on beneath the clipped surface of the language. Its first line is arresting and it draws much from ostensibly simple phrasing ('Perhaps it's natural...'). It carries on unfolding inside the reader once we have finished: a magnificent achievement and a worthy winner.’  

First runner-up was Peter Marshall from Basingstoke, who is a previous winner of the Prize (in 2007) and second runner-up was Frances Corkey Thompson from Ilfracombe, who has previously been short-listed for the Prize (in 2013). Next year will see the Frogmore Prize, which was established by the Frogmore Foundation in 1987, awarded for the 30^th consecutive year.