The Winners of the 2024 Derby Poetry Festival Poetry Prize

For the second year in a row, Derby Poetry Festival held the Derby Poetry Festival Prize for Poetry. We called out to writers, poets, and spoken word artists for their best poems. There was no theme this year; similar to last year, we had no idea what to expect.

We received close to 250 entries and read over 1000 poems nationwide. We had to whittle it down to the top 25 poems to send to this year’s wonderful judge, Kim Moore. The quality of the poems this year was outstanding. Although every poem was different from the next, they all shone in their unique way.

Kim Moore:

What a gift to have this short list of twenty-five poems, which felt like being given a bouquet of beautiful flowers, in that each one showcased a skilled and sophisticated approach to language, imagery and form. The variety of poems here show how exciting and varied contemporary poetry is and I wanted to thank every single writer who trusted me with your work. Rather disobediently, I’ve also mentioned three highly commended poems below, that I just wanted to mention as ones I particularly struggled with leaving out of the final list.

For the poems that didn’t make it into the top four, I am sure I will see your work in the shortlist of other competitions, or on the pages of poetry magazines – every single one deserves to be read more widely, and I hope that getting this far will give you confidence to keep sending your work out there. The poems I chose in the end were all ones that leaped out at me and then refused to let go – they all contained images and ideas that I thought about when I was supposed to be doing other things. I hope you will enjoy them and find them as thought-provoking as I did.

As Kim mentioned, she offered compliments to three highly commended poems, Leeside by Lissette Abrahams, “a deftly handled narrative of childhood that felt like a whole novel compressed into the space of a poem.”

How to Measure the Years by Becky May, “a masterclass in how to tell a moving and poignant story through the accumulation of images.”

Other People’s Art by Chloe Balcomb, “Tightly handled couplets unfold this claustrophobic narrative of an affair, or an almost-affair that interrogates yearning, longing and the lives we could have lived.”

As well as prizes for first, second and third, we also have a special prize for a writer in the East Midlands. So, without further ado, we are pleased to share the winners of the 2024 Derby Poetry Festival Poetry Prize.

First Prize – Kate MacAlister, a state

Instagram: @kissed.by_fire

Kate MacAlister is a poet, award-winning filmmaker, and feminist activist whose work explores the intersections of language, resistance, and the body.

She holds an M.A. in Creative Writing from the Manchester Writing School and is currently undertaking a Ph.D. in Creative Writing at the University of Nottingham. Her doctoral research centers on creating a collection of poetry that positions the female body as a site of anti-patriarchal resistance and reproductive justice.

According to Kim, “Using the pressure of white space to elevate each statement, and the use of anaphora throughout, this poem felt radical in the way it refuses to settle for one definition of what abortion is. The poet skilfully weaves together the personal, political and the social to create a memorable and moving challenge to any notion that women should not have the right to choose what happens to their bodies. Reading this poem changed my understanding of abortion – and what more can we desire from a poem than that it makes us think or feel differently?”

Here is the full winning poem.

a state:

complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.

abortion is healthcare abortion is many formations of love       abortion is the unhinging

of systems, the rendering of rising abortion is justice  we give                each other abortion is spilling

the altarwine in a burning cathedral      abortion is common, also for mothers                 maybe

abortion is what Mary would have wanted. abortion is simple, a few pills | one aspiration

one constant act of solidarity   essential medicine       abortion is tender, service         open to

transmutation

abortion is gender affirming                       abortion is seafoam, a turn of the tide

life affirming care                            abortion is a cross in the calendar abortion

is a ritual abortion is a hum before the fogs lifts at dawn                             abortion is consideration,

a magnifying glass. abortion is the lock & the key inside a snowglobe                   abortion is okay!

really. totally valid.

abortion is a waiting room without chairs           abortion is a restless day abortion is whispering

a name until the lights come back on abortion is hands within hands: safe and warm

abortion is accumulated connection, resources abortion is a soft storm, unfurled rain

is a prayerlaugh                abortion is french toast when the anaesthetic wears off

abortion is a throat crowded with silence\words abortion is a story we decide to tell

differently:

abortion is classwar

abortion is resistance

abortion is bending the law

until it breaks.

Second Prize – Lydia Unsworth, Prime Time TV

Instagram: @balmyeffluvia

Bluesky: @lydiaunsworth.bsky.social

Lydia Unsworth is a poet whose recent collections include Mortar (Osmosis) and Arthropod (Death of Workers Whilst Building Skyscrapers). Her work has appeared in many journals and anthologies including And Other Poems, Banshee, Interpreter's House, Oxford Poetry and Shearsman Magazine. She is currently undertaking a PhD exploring kinship with disappearing post-industrial architecture.

According to Kim, “This is a complete contrast to the first prize winner, both in its approach to form and to language, but this one jumped out at me from the first read as well. Not only do we need more poems about Gladiators, this is one of those poems that make you smile in recognition, and then by the end, makes you feel bad for laughing. The poem calls attention to the inherent sexism baked into our TV shows and asks us to notice, to do better. I love the deadly playfulness of this poem, and the way it switches effortlessly between colloquialisms to more formal language.”

Prime Time TV

on Gladiators the mother cried, wishing to have achieved

so much more for her daughters

you are doing this for all mothers

the son of the other presenter told her, legged up

by his father to the camera’s rolling eye

he does not tell the data analyst that

he is doing this for all data analysts

the data analysts here are assumed to have capacity

to differ from each other and to be defined

in multiple and discordant ways in no way limited

to their ability to interpret data

making it near impossible to assume

any one of the data analysts is archetypal or can be said

to be standing in as representative for any number of absent

other data analysts

Third Prize – Peter Surkov, Unescorted Leave

Peter Surkov's poems have appeared in magazines including The Rialto, Magma, and Stand. He is preparing a first collection, a narrative sequence set between a Neolithic barrow and an NHS hospital ward. He works as a doctor in London.

According to Kim, “I found this poem incredibly moving – in the way it hovers in the space between what is known, and what is not-known and in its use of both reported speech and imagining, how each of these is given equal weight. The poem is a time-travelling machine, moving deftly between what came before the act of suicide, and what comes after and the poet avoids the easy apportioning of blame to ask more complex questions about the way we are connected and disconnected from each other.”

Unescorted Leave

a prophetess you said

and what voice spoke to you     sent you south

to the land’s lip curled on Eastbourne

there’s all the time to speculate

last night you danced to Wizkid

in the communal lounge    laughing these young girls

don’t know how to whine

promethazine lulled you

the night staff found you 

calm and settled     pleasant on approach      

everyone was satisfied with your progress

perhaps you thought of nothing but fresh air

when they signed you out saying

you’d be back inside the hour

perhaps you thought of nothing

but a cigarette and a chocolate bar

until a familiar whisper snagged

in the round shell of your ear

led you onto a southbound train

through commuter towns and hesitations

and mounting unanswered calls

left you facing down a Channel wind

keen as sirens

East Midlands Prize – Tom Heath, ‘smileyface’

Instagram: chisanayama

Tom Heath is a Poet and theatre practitioner based in Nottingham and London. He has had work published in Fahmidan Journal, Red Rover Journal, Journeys Festival Gazette, Truly You and Blossoms Magazines, as well as having work performed at Nottingham Poetry Festival, VAULT Festival, Brave New Word Festival, Jermyn Street theatre, The Old Red Lion Theatre, Brighton New Venture Theatre and 1448 Festival. He was nominated for the Creative Futures Award in 2021 and was a member of the Writing East Midlands Momentum Cohort 2023/24. He has also led projects for Arts Council England and the Royal Society of Literature in researching accessible creative practice, as well as being a co-editor of the St Ghosty Creatives digital resource and creative forum.

Details for St Ghosty Creatives

stghostycreative.co.uk

Instagram: @stghostycreatives

bsky: @stghostycreatives.bsky.social

According to Kim, “This poem skilfully juxtaposes humour and playfulness with violence, which hovers at the edges of things. I love how it contains absolute specificity and pairs this with the more general ‘someone’ or ‘something’. It’s another poem which refuses to accept that we are isolated from each other, and instead holds up all the ways, good and bad, that we are connected.”

'smileyface’

Someone had drawn a smiley face on the window

and written ‘smile’ on the paving slab.

Someone had taken my hand to wrestle the morning

out from under my skin.

Something had crashed into the café window

and punched a hole in our conversation.

Someone whispered and gave me nightmares

made of an octopus smothering my night light.

Someone got murdered outside the bar

where we spent younger years.

Someone wrote in a second hand book I bought,

a Monet postcard apologising for a lifetime of regret.

Somewhere, a coat was hanging on a railway

where I’d left it years back among the clouds.

Something fell out of my bag into the road

and I never found out what it was, what I lost.

Someone gave me change when I needed it most

and strutted into nothingness and I hated them.

Fury had painted itself on the underside of my lungs

colouring tissue into mournful reddish dawn.

Guilt had made a home in my ribs,

nestled next to old photos

of siblings and childhood bruises

and hatred

but then

Someone took my hand

Someone took my hand

Huge congratulations to all of our winners, and a massive thank you to everyone who was brave enough to submit their poetry for consideration.