Winners have been announced yesterday for Ledbury Poetry Festival’s annual Poetry Competition, with a winning prize of £1000, and a week’s residential course at Ty Newydd, the National Writers’ Centre of Wales.
“As Europe’s premier poetry festival we attracted nearly 1200 entries,” says Festival Manager Phillippa Slinger, “with an increasing number coming from international poets. The winners in the Adults and Young Person’s categories are both from the US, with other winners from Australia, Ireland, Singapore and the UK. It’s an indication of just how wide and far Ledbury’s reputation has spread”
Judge Imtiaz Dharker, a highly respected poet, artist, and documentary film maker read each and every poem and decided on the winning selection. The poems are wonderful for their variety and pace – many winners go on to be well known and highly regarded and winning such a prestige competition is a sure benefit to their careers.
Overall winner for 2016 is Miller Oberman from the US who said “I’m honoured to receive the Ledbury Poetry Festival Poetry Competition” and it will be a great boost to the release of his first collection of poems due out next year.
The winners are invited to read at a special event in the 2017 Festival, on Saturday 1st July, 2017. This event is always popular as it’s free to attend, and the audience knows they are going to hear the freshest voices and the most vibrant poems in the poetry world. Many publishers attend the winners’ event to try and spot the next generation of talent – one of the winners is just 7! Some of our best loved poets started their careers as competition winners and the Festival prides itself with helping poets at all stages of their careers, particularly if they have an association with the competition.
To read the winning poems, and learn more about the poets go to http://www.poetry-festival.co.uk/ledbury-poetry-competition/
