John Tripp Award for Spoken Poetry

2011 John Tripp Award for Spoken Poetry
The Winners
 

Click on the links below to read the winning poems.

1st Prize Winner and Audience Prize-winner - Rhian Edwards

Rhian is a poet and musician from Bridgend. Her first collection of poems, Clueless Dogs, is due to be published by Seren in February 2012. Rhian's pamphlet Parade the Fib, (tall-Lighthouse), was awarded the Poetry Book Society Choice for autumn 2008. She has been published in the Times Literary Supplement, Poetry Review, Arete, Stand Magazine, the Spectator, Poetry London, Poetry Wales and the London Magazine. Rhian has delivered over 300 stage, radio and festival performances world-wide.

“Astounding Welsh poet with performances that get you in the emotional gut” - Ian McMillan, the Verb, Radio 3
 

Rhian's poem
Girl Meats Boy
 

 Runner-up - Naomi Alderson

Naomi grew up in Reading but moved to Cardiff this year to begin a degree in English and Philosophy at Cardiff University. She has written from an early age, inspired by her story-telling father, his parents (both academics of children's literature) and their book-stuffed house in Yorkshire. She completed NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) in 2007, at the age of fourteen, and moderated a young people's writing forum in the same year but has not yet attempted to publish any work. After a break from writing, whilst completing the International Baccalaureate Diploma, three weeks spent travelling in the summer of 2011 allowed her to return to her craft via a new form – the spoken word – culminating in a local slam organised by Naomi and her close friend, Thomas ‘Erasmus’ Naylor. She describes herself as “Knowing a little about a lot but not enough about anything”.

Naomi's poems
If we were still talking
The Dreamer