GEOFF STEVENS MEMORIAL POETRY PRIZE 2023

WINNERS

Congratulations to our two winners, both of whom produced outstanding entries in a VERY strong field. They will both receive a 52 page poetry collection published by award-winning publishers Indigo Dreams Publishing (us!) with a royalty contract, plus 25 copies. Collections will be published in 2024.

GAIL ASHTON: If this was the map of your life

LUCY DIXCART: Company of Ghosts

Geoff Stevens was born at West Bromwich 4th June 1942. He worked as an industrial chemist until 1995.

In 1976 he launched his own poetry magazine, Purple Patch, a successful and long-running magazine, called 'a national treasure' by The Guardian. The magazine closed with his death in February 2012. Geoff was also a successful poet in his own right being published in many magazines both in UK and overseas. We were lucky enough to be his friend and publisher, his last Indigo publication, Sleeping With You, being published just one month before he died. He saw it, he loved it, and wrote: "I’m glad that Indigo Dreams is so busy – it means the UK’s best poetry publisher is being successful." Totally over the top, but hey, who cares?

A great lover of poetry; a great man to know. We will keep his name alive through this competition in his honour.

Geoff Stevens 04/06/1942 - 02/02/2012

ABOUT GEOFF STEVENS

The Alchemist's Rainbow - Jill Sharp

Across the Barle - Lizzie Ballagher

I am Touched - Helen Kay

Company of Ghosts -Lucy Dixcart

Four Audible Sighs - Alison Campbell

A tattoo of Bonding - Diana Sanders

If this was the map of your life - Gail Ashton

The Open Eye - Martin Rieser

Your Skyline Became Traumatic - Alice Brooker

SHORTLIST

LONGLIST

gerentology for beginners - Mary Mulholland

Harpy - Georgia Hilton

His Nagging Gods - Ian Royce Chamberlain

I make you bird - Diana Cant

Instructions in a Time of Sorrow - Louise Longson

Irish Elk and Other Extinctions - Christine Macfarlane

Knitting - Keith Chandler

Like Cats & Dogs - K V Skene

Losing the gilt of being - Sarah Macleod

Making Dolmades in Essex - Judith Wozniak

Mindmade - Jane Bower

Sometime Later - Amy Ward

Spotting Dead Sheep From The Train - Charlotte Oliver

Stitching Selvedge - Ted Gooda

New Uses for a Wand - Fiona Theokritoff

Thanks for the Memory - Greg Smith

Things he Loved - Caroline Gilfillan

This Way - Julie Stevens

Walking Back from the Coast - Olivia Walwyn

(Walking in Darkness) This is a perfect time to panic - David Hale

Whelks Know - Chris Campbell

Thank you to everyone who made this such a hard competition to judge. The quality of the writing throughout was to be applauded.