Award-winning Welsh poet and author Mike Jenkins judged our 2021 awards.
Mike Jenkins has been widely published and is much in demand for his lively performances and writing workshops. He has performed at the Hay Festival, the Aldeburgh Poetry Festival and has read and tutored at Ty Newydd, the National Writers’ Centre for Wales.
He has won Wales Book of the Year in 1998 for his collection of short stories ‘Wanting to Belong’. He has also won an Eric Gregory Award from the Society of Authors, The Young Writers Prize from the Welsh Arts Council for ‘Empire of Smoke’ and the John Tripp Award for Spoken Poetry.
Mike is at the forefront of contemporary Welsh writing and is a fellow of the Academi, the Welsh Society for Authors. He is a former editor of Poetry Wales magazine and has co-edited Red Poets for 25 years, an annual magazine of left-wing poetry from Wales and beyond. He has previously judged the international Welsh Poetry Competition in 2009, 2019 and 2025.
Poetry forms the bulk of Mike’s published work, though he has also written three novellas for young people and one for adults. He is a prolific poet and has also combined poetry with art and photography in his work. Examples include ‘From Aberfan t Grenfell’ (Cultural Matters) with artist Alan Perry, and Anonymous Bosch with photographer Dave Lewis, also published by Culture Matters.
Mike is a retired teacher of English, and his last job was at Radyr Comprehensive School, Cardiff. He previously taught at Pen-y-dre High School in Merthyr for 20 years.
Mike frequently appears on radio and television and is known among Cardiff City football fans as the club’s unofficial poet.
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