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AND THE WINNER IS....



Marion McCready wins The Melita Hume Prize for Poetry
in 2013 for her collection Tree Language

Supporting young emerging writers during difficult economic times, the Melita Hume Prize for Poetry offers £1000 and publication with Eyewear Publishing for the best debut poetry collection.

Scottish Poet Marion McCready wins £1000 and publication by Eyewear in 2014.

Judge Jon Stone said “I chose Marion McCready’s Tree Language as the overall winner for two major reasons: firstly, the poetry is incredibly dark and rich and bloody (blood is a particular theme), with frequently brilliant lines and almost Celan-esque word pairings: ‘blood-cut son’, ‘snow-eyes dressing’, ‘death fruits’. Or how about a poem that opens, running on from its title:

Like a dead shrew

the baby lies comically still.

Secondly, as a collection, it’s superbly structured. Repetition within and between the poems is used to haunting effect; often, a motif or image returns in the manner of a memory resurfacing, or a recurring dream. The loosely held themes allow her to cover a range of territory, including war poems, over four distinct chapters, without seeming to stray from the direct path established in the opening pieces. This is assured, disconcertingly potent work with a sharp and distinctive flavour.”

Tree Language will be published by Eyewear Publishing in Spring 2014.

The quality of the thirteen-strong shortlist in 2013 was so high that Eyewear and judge Jon Stone have recognised three further poets:

Rachael Madelaine Nicholas is awarded Runner Up with Living Softly After, winning £150.

Shelley Roche-Jacques, for Men, Woman and Mice and Richie McCaffrey, for Salvage, are both Highly Commended and each win £75.
 
Melita Hume Prize for Poetry
The Melita Hume Prize for Poetry is an award of £1000 and a publishing deal with Eyewear Publishing for the best first full collection of a poet written in the English language, aged 35 or younger in the year of entering the competition.  The aim of this prize is to support younger, emerging writers during difficult economic times.  It is open to anyone of the requisite age, of any nationality, resident in the United Kingdom and Ireland.  It is free to enter.
The recognition and nurturing of emerging talent is a vital service to our culture, but publishing new poets is always a risky venture, even for the mainstream presses. Both the generosity and wisdom, therefore, of a prize that offers both money and a first book deal cannot be understated.” – Jon Stone, 2013 Judge
Caleb Klaces won the Melita Hume Prize for Poetry in 2012 with his collection Bottled Air which was published in April 2013 by Eyewear.
2013 competition
The Judge in 2013 was Jon Stone, poet, editor and publisher, born in 1983. Stone is one of the best young British poets now writing. He was commended in the 2011 National Poetry Competition and won a Society of Authors Eric Gregory Award in 2012. A full length collection,School of Forgery, was published by Salt in the same year and was a Poetry Book Society Summer Recommendation. His poetry has also been included in numerous anthologies, including The Best British Poetry 2011 (Salt, 2011), and Adventures in Form (Penned in the Margins, 2012).
 Winner biography
Marion McCready was born in 1977 on the Isle of Lewis and brought up in Dunoon, a small town in the west coast of Scotland by the Firth of Clyde where she currently lives with her husband and two small children. Whilst studying at Glasgow University she won the RSAMD Edwin Morgan Poetry Prize. Marion’s poems have been published in a variety of literary journals and magazines including Shearsman Magazine, Gutter, Envoi, Edinburgh Review, The Glasgow Herald, Northwords Now, Poetry Scotland, Anon, The Red Wheelbarrow and Poetry Salzburg Review. Her poems have also been anthologised in Glimmer, (Cinnamon Press 2010) and Bird Book I, (Sidekick Books 2011). Her debut pamphlet collection, Vintage Sea, was published by Calder Wood Press (2011).  She recently won a Scottish Book Trust New Writers Award (2012/13).

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