Michael Marks Awards for Poetry Pamphlets 2010
Magazine
The Michael Marks Awards for Poetry Pamphlets
Open to all poets, including self-publishers, who have published a poetry pamphlet in the UK in 2009.
Free entry
£5,000 each for the winning pamphlet and pamphlet publisher
Closing date 12 March 2010.
Now in its second year, the Michael Marks Awards for Poetry Pamphlets, run in partnership by the Poetry Book SocietySpecialist book club founded by T S Eliot in 1953, which aims to offer the best new poetry published in the UK and Ireland. Members buy at 25% discount. The PBS has a handsome new website at www.poetrybooks.co.uk and the British Library, has just sent out its call for submissions.
There are two awards worth £5,000 each: the Poetry Award recognises an outstanding work of poetry published in pamphlet form in 2009, and the Publishers’ Award is for the most outstanding pamphlet publisher in 2009.
The judges this year are Ali Smith (Chair), Richard Price and Jo Shapcott.
Submissions should be sent to Hilary Davidson at the Poetry Book Society.
Please visit the organisation’s Poetry Bookshop Online Ambitious brand-new online bookselling site, set up by the Poetry Book Society, which offers 90,000 poetry titles available in the UK and continuously updated news, articles, poetry events, updates and information about poetry. www.poetrybookshoponline.com
www.poetrybookshoponline.com/pamphlets.php, email pamplets@poetrybooks.co.ukor phone 020 7833 9247 for further information including submission guidelines and forms.
The 2008 Publisher Award was won by Oystercatcher Press.
Last year’s Poetry Award was won by Elizabeth Burns for her pamphlet The Shortest Days, published by Galdragon Press. A poem from the pamphlet is included below.
Last by Elizabeth Burns
Late summer, and the last of daylight
grows more precious: it's as if by gazing at the sky
you could somehow bear the sunset's weight,
keep back the dark that comes so quickly
and, scattering the ashes in the field at dusk
you don't look down at the earth where they fall
but keep your eyes fixed on the sky,
the last of the light, its yellow so pale.
