With apologies for the delay and thanks to everyone who submitted and has waited so patiently, we are delighted to announce the shortlist for the 2011 Scott Prize for debut collections of short stories. This prize forms part of Salt’s commitment to the short story and to our mission to discover and nurture [...]]]>

With apologies for the delay and thanks to everyone who submitted and has waited so patiently, we are delighted to announce the shortlist for the 2011 Scott Prize for debut collections of short stories. This prize forms part of Salt’s commitment to the short story and to our mission to discover and nurture new talent from around the English-speaking world.

From almost 60 entries, a shortlist of 10 has been drawn up. This has been an incredibly difficult task. The standard of entries was very high indeed and there has been much hair-pulling to come up with the final list. Here it is:

Adam Prince (Knoxville, US): The Beautiful Wishes of Ugly Men
A.J. Ashworth (Lancashire, UK): Somewhere Else, or Even Here
Cassandra Parkin (E. Yorks, UK): New World Fairy Tales
Guy Ware (London, UK): Witness Protection
John Haggerty (CA, US): The Other Half of Graceland
Jonathan Pinnock (St Albans, UK): Dot (.), Dash (-)
Julie Mayhew (Herts, UK): A Little Death
Michael Downs (Baltimore, US): The Greatest Show
Nicole Reid (IN, US): If You Must Know
Virginia Gilbert (Dublin, Ireland): Abroad

Many congratulations to all the shortlisted authors! Winners will be announced in April; meanwhile, keep an eye on Salt News for more information on each of the shortlisted books.

This year the Crashaw Prize — the UK’s only international prize for full length collections of poetry — received over eighty entries from four continents. The writers span not merely the English-speaking world, but also the striking diversity of contemporary poetry written in our extravagant tongue. It would be impudent to argue [...]]]>

This year the Crashaw Prize — the UK’s only international prize for full length collections of poetry — received over eighty entries from four continents. The writers span not merely the English-speaking world, but also the striking diversity of contemporary poetry written in our extravagant tongue. It would be impudent to argue for any sense of the centeredness of modern English usage, no one can claim to own or direct poetry in English — and perhaps one ought to argue for entirely the opposite: that we should recognise that poetry in English is both expansive, baggy and unlimited — traversing peoples and national boundaries and even imaginations.

The prize, now in its third year, has come reflect both this extraordinary plurality of practice and the continuing excitement poetry evokes in communities far and wide — poetry is clearly thriving. What characterises this year’s entries is the clear points of contact many poets now have through the Web and social networks into communities of readers who are, as it were, without borders.  Though poetry can be passionately local its new habitat is online and global and this brings with it a new excitement and a new set of ambitions for poets writing today in our networked societies. Poetry is very much a public and participative art which everyone can enjoy. This brings additional and sometimes complex pressures in selecting works which we believe can engage a wide readership where the readership may be widely dispersed. We believe we have done this and I’m delighted to announce the shortlist for this year’s prize.

The shortlist (in alphabetical order)

Vesna Goldsworthy The Angel of Salonika (UK/Serbia)

Rebecca Lehmann Between the Crackups (USA)

Lauren Levin Not Time (USA)

Alice Miller Theatre of Strangers (New Zealand)

Stephen Nelson Lunar Poems for New Religions (UK)

Charlotte Pence Other Interruptions (USA)

Aidan Semmens The Book of Isaac (UK)

Catherine Theis The Fraud of Good Sleep (USA)

The winners will be announced in during April, National Poetry Month.

Notes for editors

1. The Crashaw Prize is the only international poetry prize for full length collections of poetry written in English.
2. The prize is administered by Salt and judged by Publisher, Chris Hamilton-Emery.
3. The prize began in  2008. Winners are published the following year of entry.
4. Since the prize began it has successfully published ten first collections.
5. Previous winners include:

2009 Winners

Nathan Hoks, Reveilles (USA)

Andrew Pidoux, Year of the Lion (UK)

Nick Potamitis, The Book of Night Terrors (UK)

Jonty Tiplady, Zam Bonk Dip (UK)

Ryan van Winkle, Tomorrow, We Will Live Here (UK)

Anna Woodford, Birdhouse (UK)

2008 Winners

Tom Chivers, How to Build a City (UK)

Abi Curtis, Unexpected Weather (UK)

Jamey Dunham, The Bible of Lost Pets (USA)

Jared Stanley, Book Made of Forest (USA)

Poet Sian Hughes has been announced as the inaugural winner of the Seamus Heaney Centre Prize for a Best First Collection.

Created by the Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry at Queen’s to help publicise new poetry, Sian received her £1,000 prize at a special reception [...]]]> Winner of Seamus Heaney Prize for First Collection announced

Poet Sian Hughes has been announced as the inaugural winner of the Seamus Heaney Centre Prize for a Best First Collection.

Created by the Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry at Queen’s to help publicise new poetry, Sian received her £1,000 prize at a special reception hosted by the Arts Council of Northern Ireland.

Sian Hughes picked up the prize for her debut poetry collection The Missing, published by Salt. The Cheshire-born poet was selected by competition judges, Ciaran Carson, Michael Longley and Sinead Morrissey, who singled out her work for particular praise from a competitive shortlist of new British and Irish poets.

She said: “It’s hard to believe that writing down these very small texts and trying to make them as clear and honest as I can, could somehow turn me into a real poet. I still think of poetry as something unobtainable, like sneaking into the school stock cupboard and reading the sixth form copies of Seamus Heaney when I was supposed to be in the playground getting cold instead. Nothing has taken away that feeling of musical lift-off, of words going beyond their normal limits. This prize means that now my writing no longer only belongs to me, it also belongs in a small corner of that secret world in the stock cupboard. That’s overwhelming.”

The reception marked the opening of the British and Irish Contemporary Poetry Conference. Hosted by Queen’s University Belfast’s Seamus Heaney Centre for the first time, it draws together poets and academics from across the UK and Ireland.

Professor Edward Larrissy, Head of the School of English at Queen’s said: “The Seamus Heaney Centre is grateful for the support of the Arts Council and delighted to be working in partnership with it yet again. Together we continue to support that dynamic relationship between the creative and the critical, which is such a notable aspect of the distinguished and still developing tradition of poetry in and around Queen’s University Belfast.”

Rosemary Kelly, OBE, Chairman of the Arts Council of Northern Ireland, commented: “Sian Hughes is a worthy first winner of the Seamus Heaney Centre poetry prize and we are looking forward to seeing more from her in the future. The Arts Council and Queen’s University are working together to support a number of projects to develop excellence in creative writing by supporting new writers. As hosts of tonight’s reception, it is a great honour to welcome so many esteemed poets and academics here to mark the beginning of the conference and what promises to be an enthralling programme of events.”

Sian Hughes lives near Banbury, Oxfordshire with her two young children and works for the Oxford and Cherwell Valley College running Access courses for adults. In 2006 she won the Arvon International Poetry Competition with The Send Off, an elegy for her third child. Her first collection is The Missing.

Belfast poet Michael Longley chaired the panel for the Seamus Heaney Centre poetry prize. Commenting on the competition and winning poet Sian Hughes, he said: “The entries were a good cross section of Irish and British poetry. They were serious and introspective, formerly alert and interested in shape and form. This is a great morale boost for the winner.”

The Contemporary British and Irish Poetry Conference is taking place at Queen’s from the 15 to 17 September.

Members of the public are being invited to attend evening poetry readings during the event where they can hear from leading lights such as Christopher Ricks, one of the greatest living commentators on contemporary poetry, Michael Schmidt, Christopher Reid, Peter McDonald, Carol Rumens and Gerry Dawe.

Anyone interested in attending the poetry readings should contact Gerry Hellawell at Queen’s on 028 9097 1070 or email g.hellawell@qub.ac.uk for more information.

Media inquiries to comms.office@qub.ac.uk or tel 00 44 (0)28 9097 3087

Shortlist for London New Poetry Award organised by London Festival Fringe 2010 in conjunction with Cegin Productions and Coffee-House Poetry at the Troubadour and judged by Tamar Yoseloff, Daljit Nagra and Adam O’Riordan, winner to be announced at Pizza Express Jazz Club Soho and £2,500 Award [...]]]>
London Festival Fringe New Poetry Award 2010

Shortlist for London New Poetry Award organised by London Festival Fringe 2010 in conjunction with Cegin Productions and Coffee-House Poetry at the Troubadour and judged by Tamar Yoseloff, Daljit Nagra and Adam O’Riordan, winner to be announced at Pizza Express Jazz Club Soho and £2,500 Award presented at Waldorf London Awards Ceremony in August.

Details of 15 first collections (2009-2010) shortlisted

The Method Men — David Briggs (Salt)
How to Build a City — Tom Chivers (Salt)
Unexpected Weather — Abi Curtis (Salt)
Snow Calling — Agnieszka Studzinska (Salt)

Inroads — Carolyn Jess-Cooke (Seren Books)
The Tethers — Carrie Etter (Seren Books)
Breath — Ellen Phethean (Flambard Press)
When God Has Been Called Away to Greater Things — Grace Wells (Dedalus Press)
Berg — Hilary Menos (Seren Books)
King of Country — Howard Wright (Blackstaff Press)
The Girl with the Cactus Handshake — Katrina Naomi (Templar Poetry)
Insensible Heart — Maureen Jivani (Mulfran Press)
A Republic of Linen — Patrick Brandon (Bloodaxe Books)
New Light for the Old Dark — Sam Willetts (Cape Poetry)
Even the Sea — Eleanor Livingstone (Red Squirrel Press)

The winners will be announced at 4pm on Sunday February 28 (the first day of Adelaide Writers’ Week) [...]]]> With nominations up by almost 100 this year, the shortlists for the 2010 Adelaide Festival Awards for Literature are now hot off the press. Salt authors Pam Brown and Marion May Campbell have both been nominated.

The winners will be announced at 4pm on Sunday February 28 (the first day of Adelaide Writers’ Week) in a presentation open to the public in the East Tent, Pioneer Women’s Memorial Gardens.

Established by the SA Government in 1986 the awards are managed through Arts SA and granted biennially, with a prize pool this year of $130,000. There are six national awards as well as two awards and two fellowships specifically for South Australian writers.

The most coveted national award is the Premier’s Award ($10,000), which is selected from amongst the winners of the published categories.

Innovation award ($10,000) – for a published book which departs from the conventional use of genre by borrowing elements from a number of genres such as fiction, non-fiction, biography, autobiography, poetry or cultural criticism.

• Marion May Campbell (VIC), Fragments from a Paper Witch, Salt Publishing.
• MTC Cronin (QLD), Squeezing Desire Through a Sieve: Micro-essays on Judgement and Justice, Puncher and Wattmann.
• Ross Gibson (NSW), The Summer Exercises, University of Western Australia Press.
• Prof Stephen Muecke (NSW), Joe in the Andamans and other fictocritical stories, Local Consumptions Publications.
• Gerald Murnane (VIC), Barley Patch, Giramondo.

John Bray poetry award ($15,000) – for a published collection of poetry.

• Adam Aitken (NSW), Eighth Habitation, Giramondo Poets.
• Pam Brown (NSW), True Thoughts, Salt Publishing.
• Martin Harrison (NSW), Wild Bees: New and Selected Poems, University of Western Australia Press.
• Emma Jones (Aust/UK), The Striped World, Faber and Faber Ltd.
• Martin Langford (NSW), The Human Project: New and Selected Poems, Puncher and Wattmann Poetry.
• Bronwyn Lea (QLD), The Other Way Out, Giramondo Poets.

guardian.co.uk, Friday 19 December 2008 17.18 GMT

Six debut poets are to have their first collections of poetry published around the world after winning the inaugural Crashaw prize, due to be awarded annually by the independent poetry press Salt Publishing. Read more …

tags: the?guardian, [...]]]>

Crashaw prize winners announced

Alison Flood

guardian.co.uk, Friday 19 December 2008 17.18 GMT

Six debut poets are to have their first collections of poetry published around the world after winning the inaugural Crashaw prize, due to be awarded annually by the independent poetry press Salt Publishing.
Read more …

tags: the?guardian, crashaw?prize, alison?flood]]>

This year marks the inauguration of The Crashaw Prize, an important new venture for Salt, as we continue to discover and nurture new [...]]]>

• Tom Chivers How to Build a City (UK)
• Abi Curtis Unexpected Weather (UK)
• Jamey Dunham The Bible of Lost Pets (USA)
• Jared Stanley Book Made of Forest (USA)

Judge’s comments:

This year marks the inauguration of The Crashaw Prize, an important new venture for Salt, as we continue to discover and nurture new talent from around the English-speaking world. The prize forms part of Salt’s commitment to publishing debut collections and to our vision of new literature in English as an international endeavour. It also provides proof that poetry is an art with a future ? even in these financially-troubled times.

We need new writers ? sometimes to entertain and surprise us, sometimes to console us, sometimes to disturb and challenge us. These books do just that, each in their own unique way. The writers also show us that poetry is both expansive and inextinguishable. Despite some claims of marginality for the art, poetry continues to have a lasting purchase on the mind and perhaps even the conscience of us all. We especially need it now.

Poetry is often at its best under pressure, the pressure of language working at its hardest, and the pressure of the poet’s social and political presence in our complex and connected world, a world full of conflicts and collisions. Each of these writers is responding to these demands in fascinating and diverse ways.

Reading the hundreds of manuscripts submitted during the year was, perhaps a little unusually, a pleasure, sometimes a surprise, and it is heartening to see so much new writing focused on those tender readerly concerns of books being entertaining, readable, pleasurable, evocative, imaginative and well-constructed. As well as challenging, provocative and life-enhancing. This year’s winners manage to balance all these impulses with great confidence and skill. I also believe that this year’s winners provide us with damn fine reads.

We wish the writers every success in the coming year and look forward to their publication in 2009.

tags: the?crashaw?prize, winners, 2008]]>

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