Wigtown poetry winners announced

Apr 24 2009 by Sara Bain, Dumfries Standard Friday

THE prestigious Wigtown Poetry Competition will present this year’s winners with their prizes at a public award ceremony in the County Buildings, Wigtown at 12.30pm on Saturday, May 2.

This will present a chance to meet the winning poets and the judges and hear the prizewinning poems read in person by their authors.

Judge Professor Douglas Dunn will present the winner, Victor Tapner, of Billericay, with the main cash prize of £2,500 for his poem Dancing for Monsieur Degas.

The winner of the Gaelic prize, Tormad Caimbeul from Lewis, wins £1,000 for his poem Rathad Dhuncreige, to be presented by the Gaelic writer and judge Kevin MacNeil.

Also on hand to receive their prizes and read their winning poems will be Barbara Smith from Dundalk, Jim Carruth from Bridge of Weir and Mora Maclean from Glasgow.

The Love Poem category, sponsored by the World Burns Federation for Homecoming Scotland 2009, was won by Rob Foxcroft with his poem The Dark Time of the Year.

Wigtown Poetry Competition is run by Wigtown Festival Company in partnership with Dumfries and Galloway Arts Association.

Since its inception five years ago, the competition has been inspiring new and established poets the length and breadth of the country and from overseas to submit their latest poems in the hope of recognition and the substantial cash prizes.

Previous prizewinners have gone on to even bigger things — for example poet Jen Hadfield is this year’s winner of Britain’s most prestigious prize, the T S Eliot, for her latest collection Nigh No Place.

“There was a bumper entry this year”, said DGAA Literature Development Officer Davie Kelly, “The number of entries was 50 per cent up on last year.

‘The additional publicity generated by a very generous contribution from the World Burns Federation to sponsor a new prize for the best love lyric, announced in January, helped give the competition that additional boost.”

The judges also commented on the high standard of the entries: Douglas Dunn, commending eight additional prizewinners, said that he could easily have chosen another 20 entries for prizes.