Judges Liz Berry, Malika Booker and Pascale Petit reveal their 2020 Women Poets’ Prize shortlist
“Ambitious, experimental and ground-breaking” work wins nine poets a place on the shortlist for the Women Poets’ Prize, which returns for its second prize year in 2020.
The biennial prize, founded by the Rebecca Swift Foundation and supported by FMcM Associates, is awarded to three women writers who each receive a holistic package that combines financial aid, creative development, well-being, and pastoral support. Honouring Rebecca Swift’s two key passions – poetry and women’s empowerment — it has been described as an “important model for literature organisations in the UK going forward”.
The 2020 judges are the award-winning poets Liz Berry, Malika Booker and Pascale Petit. They selected the nine poets from a longlist of 30, with a total of 734 submissions entered to the prize this year.
The judges said: “The poems were ambitious, experimental and ground-breaking in terms of formal, thematic, rhythmic, lyrical, narrative consideration. It is heart-lifting to know that women are making such thrilling, ambitious, tender work and that the world of poetry is moving forwards in exciting ways and in such capable hands. An exciting selection of poems.”
THE 2020 SHORTLIST
Alisha Dietzman was raised in the American South and Central Europe. She lives in Dundee, where she is a PhD candidate in Divinity at the University of St Andrews, supported by a grant from the US-UK Fulbright Commission. Her poetry has appeared in Ploughshares, Pleiades, Pain, and elsewhere.
Olivia Douglass is a British-Nigerian poet whose writing envisages Black queer experiences outside of colonial frameworks. A Barbican Young Poets Alumna, Olivia has been commissioned by National Poetry Library and was Artist in Residence at Theatre Peckham. Olivia’s pamphlet, Slow Tongue, was published in 2018. She is currently working towards her debut collection.
A native of the US, Eve Ellis lives in London. She won the Winchester Poetry Prize in 2016 and was short-listed for the Nine Arches Primers scheme in 2019. Her poems have also appeared in Magma and Bare Fiction. She recently completed an MA in Creative Writing and Education at Goldsmiths.
Cecilia Knapp is is the current Young People’s Laureate for London. Poems have appeared in The White Review, Magma and Bath magazines. She was featured in British Vogue as a young writer to watch. She was shortlisted for the 2020 Outspoken poetry prize. Her debut novel is forthcoming with The Borough Press (Harper Collins). @ceciliaknapp Instagram/Twitter www.ceciliaknapp.com
Natalie Linh Bolderston is a Vietnamese-Chinese-British poet. She was a runner-up in the 2019 BBC Proms Poetry Competition, came third in the 2019 National Poetry Competition, and received an Eric Gregory Award in 2020. Her pamphlet, The Protection of Ghosts, is published with V. Press.
Bryony Littlefair is a poet, community centre worker and workshop facilitator living in London. Her pamphlet Giraffe won the Mslexia Pamphlet Prize in 2017 and is out now with Seren Books. She was shortlisted for the inaugural Rebecca Swift Foundation Women Poets’ Prize in 2018. bryonylittlefair.wordpress.com
Laura Potts is a writer from West Yorkshire. A recipient of the Foyle Young Poets Award, her work has been published by Aesthetica, The Moth and The Poetry Business. Laura received a commendation from The Poetry Society in 2018 and was shortlisted for The Edward Thomas Fellowship in 2020.
Yvette Siegert is a Latinx poet and CantoMundo Poetry Fellow currently reading for a D.Phil in Spanish American literature at Merton College, Oxford. She received the Lord Alfred Douglas Prize, and her translations of Alejandra Pizarnik, Extracting the Stone of Madness: Poems 1962–1972, won the Best Translated Book Award.
Warda Yassin is a British-born Somali poet and secondary school teacher based in Sheffield. She was a winner of the 2018 New Poets Prize for her debut pamphlet Tea with Cardamom (Poetry Business, published 2019). From October 2020, she will be taking on the role of Sheffield Poet Laureate.
The prize will showcase the nine poets in a social media campaign, starting next week. Please follow @foundationswift and look out for #WomenPoetsPrize on Twitter for this.
The three winners will be announced in mid-November. They will each receive £1,500 in a cash bursary – increased from £1,000 thanks to a generous donor – alongside:
• a poetry mentor for the duration of a year,
• the offer of pastoral coaching,
• creative opportunities, from performance to bookbinding,
practical support, such as digital skills training and childcare cover, and
• links and collaborations with prize partners.
For the first time in 2020, all 30 poets on the longlist were offered a year’s free membership to Being A Writer, the innovative writers’ creativity platform just launched by prize partners TLC, the UK’s leading editorial consultancy.
Earlier this year, the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire – one of the UK’s most prestigious music and drama schools – came on board as a partner, working with the prize to provide poets with voice coaching opportunities. The RBC joins Faber and Faber, Bath Spa University, The Literary Consultancy (TLC), City Lit, Verve Festival, and The Poetry School as partners through which the full benefits are being delivered.
Find out more and join the conversation via www.rebeccaswiftfoundation.org | @FoundationSwift #WomenPoetsPrize
For all media enquiries, please contact Daniel Kramb and Robert Greer at FMcM Associates.
