2022
Winners
1st Prize
Flashbacks & Flowers:
Rufus Mufasa, Pontypridd, Wales
Literary activist Rufus Mufasa is a pioneering participatory artist who advocates hip hop education and poetry development accessible to all. Lyricist, rapper and performance art poet, with an MA in scriptwriting.
Rufus is a Hay Writer at Work, supports several intergenerational projects, mentors men at Parc Prison and is planning her fourth visit to Finland, where she recently headlined the Helsinki Literature Festival. As well as being the first Welsh artist to perform at Ruisrock festival, she mentors Finnish beat poets, and now writes trilingually as a result.
She has worked with the BBC, Chapter Arts, The Cooperative Society and the Barbican. She has won or been specially commended in several poetry contests.
To find out more about her work, visit her website here.
2nd Prize
Siarad:
Caroline Reid, Adelaide, Australia
Caroline Reid is an award-winning professional writer and performance poet living in Adelaide, Australia on Kaurna land. She writes and performs poetry, facilitates creative writing workshops, collaborates with artists and communities, and mentors new & emerging writers in real life and on-line. She has twice represented South Australia in the Australian Poetry Slam at the Sydney Opera House and is active in Adelaide’s spoken word scene. Her writing and performances have been described as raw, moving, generous, hysterical, weird and badass.
Caroline collaborated with sound engineer Jeffrey Zhang to record SIARAD as an experimental audiobook (or audio performance). She also adapted SIARAD for the stage, and performs it as a solo spoken-word theatre show, most recently at Red Dirt Poetry Festival in Alice Springs.
3rd Prize
We Are The Winter People:
Jenny Rowbory, Machynlleth, Wales
We Are The Winter People is the collected works of Jenny Rowbory. The diverse range of poetry deals with love, loss and the poet’s ever-changing relationship with faith. Despite the struggles depicted within the work, it is an ultimately empowering collection, filled with strength, determination and hope.
We Are The Winter People contains poems to ‘come alongside you and hold your hand’ and will offer you compassion and company in your times of struggle. Beautifully written, sometimes playful and sometimes painful, the poetry speaks to our souls as we try to navigate this life together.
This book is the next big push in Jenny’s Herculean fundraising attempt for life-saving surgery in the US, which is not available to her in the UK.
More details on what exactly the fundraising is for can be found at www.gofundme.com/savejenny. Proceeds of the book will go directly to this goal.
Our 2022 Judge
John Evans
Welsh writer, poet and environmental campaigner John Evans judged our 2022 competition.
John Evans is one of Wales’ most uncompromising and original contemporary artists and writers. He began his career as a frontman and songwriter for Wales’ first punk rock band. He later went solo and signed as a singer/songwriter to the Situation 2 arm of Beggars Banquet Records. His single Sister Soul was released in 1981.
He has worked as a full-time writer, film-maker and lecturer for Cardiff University and Literature Wales. He has been described as ‘the leading figure in the New Wave of Welsh writing’. He is also well known for campaigning with ‘Save The Badger’ alongside Queen legend Brian May.
Judges comments:
The quality of the work produced by all the entrants this year was of a very high standard. Today sadly, poetry has largely become an art form firmly tied to an establishment elite and academia. Arts Council’s circulate precious public funds among a small group of people to write, publish, review (always positive), and win their prestigious sounding awards. Meanwhile, poetry book sales are shockingly low given the money spent, the work is ignored outside of this cosy arrangement, and the public is either disengaged or denied access to the wonderful world of poetry. While judging this competition, I was delighted to discover that despite all of this people throughout the world are finding their own voices, creating their own publishing and performing scene, and are exploring all of the possibilities of this exciting form of writing. Poetry is reborn. It has been taken over by people of all ages and backgrounds who want to express themselves through verse.
The three winning poets were perfect examples of this growing phenomenon - a point where two roads diverged, and they chose how their work would move forward.
First place went to Rufus Mufasa, poet, performer, MC and mother, with her outstanding and highly original autobiographical collection. Second prize to Australian writer Caroline Reid, herself another very talented performer and wordsmith who through verse also takes us on a journey through life. In third place is Jenny Rowbory, a young girl struck down by a rare illness (Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome) which left her bedbound, and who has spent the following years staring at the ceiling while waiting for life-saving surgery. Jenny’s poems are heart-breaking, yet her work is also inspirational, and encouraging – it is the work of a remarkable woman and another hugely talented writer.
– John Evans
2022 Shortlist
The shortlist celebrates a wide range of voices and styles.
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Small Machine — Demi Anter
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Where Decay Sleeps — Anna Cheung
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Airplane Baby Banana Blanket — Benjamin Dodds
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The Unicycle Paradox — Kenneth Hickey
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Project Sonnet — D.P. Houston
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Crash & Learn — Rebecca Kenny
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Flashbacks & Flowers — Rufus Mufasa
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Siarad — Caroline Reid
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We Are The Winter People — Jenny Rowbory
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Unbridled Messiah — Pnina Shinebourne
2022 Longlist
The shortlist celebrates a wide range of voices and styles.
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Small Machine — Demi Anter
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Before We Breathe — Jackie Biggs
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Portrait Of A Woman Walking Home — Anne Casey
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The Light We Cannot See — Anne Casey
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Where Decay Sleeps — Anna Cheung
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An/Other Pastoral — Tjawangwa Dema
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Airplane Baby Banana Blanket — Benjamin Dodds
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Lemon In Orbit — Ole Hagen
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Between Coastal Rocks & Softer Places — Jennifer Hetherington
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The Unicycle Paradox — Kenneth Hickey
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Project Sonnet — D.P. Houston
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Blood Sugar, Sex, Magic — Sarah James
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Touch My Head Softly — Eileen P. Kennedy
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Crash & Learn — Rebecca Kenny
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Some Houses Are Built Without Walls — Sara Levy
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Flashbacks & Flowers — Rufus Mufasa
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Lonely Lines — Freya O’Brien
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After April Rain — Elizabeth Oxley
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The Lock Picker — Sue Proffitt
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Siarad — Caroline Reid
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We Are The Winter People — Jenny Rowbory
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Unbridled Messiah — Pnina Shinebourne
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Sacrifice — Sally Spedding
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Angels of Yulin — Jenn Wilkins
Results were announced on our web site, Facebook Group and Twitter on 1st November, 2022. We have also informed the UK national press, Literature Wales, Pontypridd Observer and associated district newspapers, Nation Cymru, The National, Buzz magazine, SW Echo, the Western Mail, BBC Wales and RCTCBC as well as many organisations on our mailing list. Thanks to all those who entered and look forward to reading your work next year.