The Edwin Morgan Poetry Competition ran from 2008 to 2012, by which time, sponsored by the University of Strathclyde and hosted by the Edinburgh International Book Festival, it offered one of the biggest poetry prizes in the UK, with awards totalling £6,600 and a First Prize of £5,000.
The judges in 2008 were Colette Bryce, Donny O’Rourke and Richard Price; for 2009, Ron Butlin and Polly Clark; for 2010, Robert Crawford and Kathleen Jamie; for 2011, Kona MacPhee and Vicki Feaver, and for 2012 Don Paterson.
2008 – 2012 Competition Winners
2012: Jen Hadfield
Jen Hadfield lives in Shetland and works as a writer, writing tutor and visual artist. Her collections Almanacs and Nigh No-place are published by Bloodaxe. Her third collection, Byssus, was published by Picador in 2014.
2011: Jane Mckie
Jane McKie, originally from West Sussex, lives in Linlithgow, West Lothian. Her first collection, Morocco Rococo (Cinnamon Press), was awarded the Sundial / Scottish Arts Council Prize for best first book of 2007. She runs a small press, Knucker Press, which is dedicated to bringing writers and artists together in book and pamphlet form. Her second collection was When the Sun Turns Green (Polygon, 2009), followed by a Garden of Bedsteads (Mariscat Press, 2011), Sea Glass Colour Chart (Knucker Press, 2013), Kitsune (Cinnamon Press, 2015) and From The Wonder Book of Would You Believe It?: poems (Mariscat Press, 2016).
A.B. Jackson was born in Glasgow, raised in Cheshire and Fife, and studied English Literature at the University of Edinburgh. His first book, Fire Stations, was published by Anvil Press in 2003, and won the Forward Prize for Best First Collection that year. Donut Press published his limited edition pamphlet, Apocrypha, in October 2010. His 2015 collection from Bloodaxe Books, The Wilderness Party, was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation.
Paul Batchelor was born in Northumberland. In 2003 he received an Eric Gregory Award; his first collection, The Sinking Road, appeared from Bloodaxe in 2007. It was shortlisted for the Jerwood-Aldeburgh First Collection Prize and the Glen Dimplex Prize for Best First Collection.Paul wrote a PhD on Barry MacSweeney’s poetry, and is a freelance reviewer, writing mainly for the Times and the Guardian.
2008: Kate Miller
Kate Miller was born in Plymouth and educated at King’s College, Cambridge and Central St Martin’s in Fine Art and Art History. In 2005 she received the Peters Fraser Dunlop bursary to study for her MA in Poetry at Royal Holloway College and is now a doctoral student at Goldsmiths. Her poetry has been published in Bedford Square 2 (John Murray, 2007), London Magazine, The Shop and Poetry Wales.
Edwin Morgan Trust 