Antony Rowland wins the 2012 Manchester Poetry Prize
The winner of the the Manchester Writing School at MMU’s third Manchester Poetry Prize was announced at a gala ceremony on Friday 19th October 2012.
Anthony Rowland from South Manchester took the £10,000 first prize, announced at the event which took place at Chetham’s School of Music as part of the 2012 Manchester Literature Festival.
Chair of Judges Adam O’Riordan, who is Lecturer in Creative Writing at Manchester Metropolitan University, said: “The judging process went remarkably smoothly considering the high number and the quality of the entrants. A feature of our final judges meeting was that we read aloud to each other all the portfolios we were interested in, which really did illustrate the strengths of the best writers. I asked my fellow judges if they had any comments on the judging process; they would recommend to everybody submitting their poetry for competitions that they also read their work aloud before sending it in – this process exposes flaws in poems that may be hidden to the mind’s ear. We’re very proud of our shortlist. It contains a lot of staggeringly-good poets and we hope this is a boost to all their careers and not just that of the winner, well-deserved though we believe our decision was in that respect.”
