Fenton Aldeburgh First Collection Prize

New Funder and Shortlist for Aldeburgh First Collection Prize

The Poetry Trust is delighted to announce new three year funding from The Fenton Arts Trust for its annual prize – one of the most influential and established in the UK – for a first book of poems.

The award will double this year – to £2,000 – and be re-titled The Fenton Aldeburgh First Collection Prize from 2012 until 2015. Fenton Arts Trust Chair, Stephen Morris, said:

"It's a special pleasure to support this prize because Shu-Yao Fenton founded The Fenton Arts Trust in memory of her husband Colin, throughout his life a lover of English literature and of poetry in particular."

From 78 entries, the shortlist for the 2012 Fenton Aldeburgh First Collection Prize highlights five distinctive new voices as ‘ones-to-watch’ amongst the next generation of UK poets:

Olivia McCannon

Bee Journal by Sean Borodale (Cape)
Loudness by Judy Brown (Seren)
Exactly My Own Length by Olivia McCannon (Carcanet)
Misadventure by Richard Meier (Picador)
Breaking Silence by Jacob Sam-La Rose (Bloodaxe)

All three judges commented on the exceptional quality, range and diversity of debut collections entered, and this year just one book – Breaking Silence – also appears on the Forward Best First Collection shortlist.

Exactly My Own Length
is available now in paperback.
Ebook version coming soon.

Robert Seatter (Chair) who published his third collection in 2011 and is Head of BBC History said: “The shortlist was as usual very hard won, measuring the reflective, the searing voices against the incisive and the witty, but all united in their brave and defining use of concentrated language.” Fellow judge Esther Morgan – herself an Aldeburgh winner in 2001 – noted that it was “a sign of good poetry health that no one fashion or aesthetic dominated.” Reflecting on the strength of this year’s entries, third judge Alicia Stubbersfield was pleased that “many of the books contained poems that were heartfelt and intelligent, that resonated and invited the reader to return to them.”

The Fenton Aldeburgh First Collection Prize is valuable not simply as a cash prize, but especially for its emphasis on developing talent. Uniquely, the winner receives a week of ‘protected’ writing time on the inspirational Suffolk coast and – most significantly – an invitation to read at the subsequent Aldeburgh Poetry Festival and thereby reach the UK’s largest and most dedicated contemporary poetry audience.

This year’s winner will be announced at the start of the 24th Aldeburgh Poetry Festival on Friday 2 November 2012. More details are available at www.thepoetrytrust.org.

For more information, please see the press release on the Carcanet website.