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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