News Archive

2009 New Welsh Review Poetry Prize
Winners Announced

Left to Right: John Goodby, Philip Gross and Katherine Stansfield

Acclaimed poet and judge of the 2009 New Welsh Review Poetry Prize, Philip Gross, announced the winners of the inaugural competition at an award ceremony on Thursday 12 March at The Bookshop, Aberystwyth Arts Centre.

Swansea-based poet John Goodby received the £200 prize and read his winning poem 21st October, 1966 alongside runners-up Katherine Stansfield, PhD student at Aberystwyth University, and Philip Tomkins from Cardiff, both receiving £50. The three winning poets will also see they work published in Wales’s leading English-language literary magazine, New Welsh Review.

Judge Philip Gross praised the quality of poems entered into the competition, open to New Welsh Review subscribers and students in the Aberystwyth University Department of English and Creative Writing: “What struck me was the diversity of entries, widely different in their tone and subject matter, texture, frames of reference, their use of forms and the demands they made of readers…I hope readers relish the three poems that rose to the top of my order for their differences, their almost-incomparability.”

Kathryn Gray, editor of New Welsh Review, introduced the audience to the spring issue of the magazine and thanked Aberystwyth University Department of English and Creative Writing, co-sponsors of the Poetry Prize. “We are delighted to hold our inaugural Poetry Prize in association with Aberystwyth University. New Welsh Review aims to publish the best of writing talent in Wales, emergent and established, putting it on a platform with writing from the rest of the UK and overseas. Opening the prize to developing poets, learning their craft at Aberystwyth University, has shown the quality of students attracted to study here and what a vibrant literary scene there is.”

The spring issue of New Welsh Review is available by subscription or is for sale in shops throughout Wales. The issue features travel writer Tom Anderson on La-La Land and the Culture of Impulse, Jane MacNamee on the life and work of Eiluned Lewis, Judy Kendall on Edward Thomas and John Sam Jones on gay literature. In the opinion and comment pages, David Adams considers the death of theatre criticism in Wales and Robert Minhinnick writes about his latest work-in-progress, In Goliath’s Country. Poems and Fiction come from Charles Simic, Kelly Grovier, Paul Henry, Richard Marggraf Turley, Carrie Etter, Katherine Stansfield, Henry Shukman and Bethan Roberts.

More information is available online at:
www.newwelshreview.com
Read the editor’s blog at:
www.newwelshreview.blogspot.com

Or contact New Welsh Review direct on:
admin@newwelshreview.com / 01970 628410