Throughout 2023, the University of Leeds Poetry Centre has participated in Smeaton300 , a creative programme from arts organisation Foxglove, working with artists and scientists inspired by the work of the UK's first civil engineer – John Smeaton. It has been a real pleasure working with poet Rachel Bower who delivered writing workshops throughout October...
Throughout 2023, the University of Leeds Poetry Centre has participated in Smeaton300. It has been a real pleasure working with poet Rachel Bower who delivered writing workshops throughout October with community groups and primary schools in the Leeds area. We are delighted to now share the winners of the adult category of our Smeaton300 poetry competition and will be announcing our children’s competition winners shortly.
The University of Leeds Poetry centre is once gain delighted to be in partnership with The Rialto , the RSPB, and BirdLife Intenrational Cambridge Conservation Initiative on the 2025 version of this competition. Poems are invited that deal with any aspect of nature and place – these terms will be given a wide interpretation by...
The award ceremony for the 2024 Nature and Place Poetry Competition took place in Cambridge on August 14 hosted by Cambridge Conservation Initiative. The ULPC is one of the partners in the competition and this year's chief judge was our colleague Zaffar Kunial. (Other members of the Centre, including Matt Howard, Kate Simpson, Jon...
Congratulations to Safiya Kinshasha whose first collection Cane, Corn, and Gully was shortlisted for the Felix Dennis Prize for Best First Collection 2023. Safiya gave a performance of part of the book at the Forward Prizes ceremony in Leeds earlier this week. Safiya is currently a PhD student working on an interdisciplinary project which...
Congratulations to former Poetry Centre colleagues Jason Allen-Paisant and Malika Booker (Douglas Caster Fellow in Poetry) who won major prizes in this year's Forward Awards ceremony held at the West Yorkshire Playhouse here in Leeds. Jason's Self-Portrait as Othello won Best Collection and Malika 'Libation' won Best Individual Poem.
We are delighted to announce that submissions to the 2023 Brotherton Poetry Prize are now open. Details of how to enter and the rules of the competition are available here. The judges are Simon Armitage, Malika Booker, Kimberly Campanello, Zaffar Kunial, Caitlin Stobie, and John Whale. The deadline for entries is midnight on September...
Poetry Centre member and Associate Professor Dr Kimberly Campanello recently published 'Moving Nowhere Here', a long poem on Parkinson's, in Granta (online) She discussed the poem's form and poetics in a Webinar interview on 'Moving Nowhere Here' for the Davis Phinney Foundation (USA) and was featured in The Independent.
Matt Howard's ‘The Pond’ featured in a recent issue of The New Statesman. The poem focuses on a spring 'awakening': Here’s the start of a new sense of things – just into March, the light and air fuller and that mallard, so still there at the edge, her heaviness pending, neck stretched, not at rest;...
The Leeds Peace Poetry Prize 2022, held in partnership with the University of Leeds Poetry Centre, has announced the winners in its adult category. Judges Malika Booker and Jason Allen-Paisant awarded first prize to Andy Dalgleish for his poem 'Red Borscht'. Sarah Leavesley was second with 'Counting the Cost', and Moria Garland came third with...