The Chancellor’s Poetry Prize 2024

For this year's Chancellor's Poetry Prize, current undergraduate and postgraduate Newcastle University students were invited to submit a poem that explored the idea of place in the broadest sense. 

Entries were submitted from across the University, from every discipline including Marine Biology, Dentistry, Earth Sciences, Electrical Engineering, Physics, Philosophy, Computer Science, Music, Geography, Law, Architecture, Fine Art and Politics as well as Literature and Creative Writing. 

The submissions were judged by Neil Astley, Editor & Managing Director of Bloodaxe Books Ltd, and our Chancellor and award-winning poet Imtiaz Dharker. Due to the strong set of entries, Neil and Imtiaz chose joint winners and three highly-commended poems.

The joint winners are:

Sidmouth Seagull by Nadine El-Enany, MA Writing Poetry (London)

Blackbird by Suzanna Fitzpatrick, MA Writing Poetry (London)

Sidmouth Seagull - The poet slides from an exploration of the human/ animal into language and belonging, with a quite unexpected and moving image of the Christ-like seagull.

Lying in the sand, too heavy for being swept out to where miracles coagulate to make ocean,

the gull lays its head

Christ-like on my shoulder having only moments ago taken the fish from my hand. I don't say stolen

because seagulls know the meaning of hunt and scavenge

if language is upholstery

and underneath it what matters. Concepts of morality and crime

are how we pretend humanity. If the fish belongs anywhere it's to itself and then to the sea where the gull will find it.

If we belong anywhere

it's in childhood where language

is love for how the body makes song.

Blackbird - The emotion in this poem is subtly implied through the sense of nature stirring after winter.

When the sky has been grey for a month, vegetation stewed limp by thaw

in the suburban gardens you pass daily, and always, it seems, uphill –

there is sometimes reason to pause,

as now – a sound, briefly unplaceable

until you look up to a blackbird, singing despite winter, despite the absence of love,

despite no biological imperative other than song itself: his fluting diminished to a muted croon flickering in his throat

as a flame burns low, so low you think it ash, until it stirs.

Highly-commended poems:

Here by Finlay Worrallo, Modern Languages (Undergraduate)

High Street Disappearance by Steve Kendall, PhD Creative Writing

Untitled by Lily Tibbits, English Literature and Creative Writing (Undergraduate)

Click here to read Here, High Street Disappearance and Untitled.

Congratulations to all the winners and thank you to all those who submitted an entry. We look forward to seeing your submissions in 2025.