Chancellor’s Poetry Prize Past Winners

Nadine El-Enany, MA Writing Poetry, Poetry School London - Winner for the poem 'Sidmouth Seagull'

Nadine El-Enany’s poetry has appeared in Butcher’s Dog, Magma, Propel Magazine, 14 Magazine, fourteen poems, Gutter Magazine, Black Iris and Poetry Wales. She was shortlisted for the 2023 Poetry London Pamphlet Prize and longlisted for the 2023 Rialto Nature and Place Poetry Competition and the 2022 Fish Poetry Prize. She is the author of (B)ordering Britain: Law, race and empire.

Sidmouth Seagull by Nadine El-Enany

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.

Suzanna Fitzpatrick, MA Writing Poetry, Poetry School London - Winner for the poem 'Blackbird'

Suzanna Fitzpatrick (she/her) is a bisexual poet with poems on Radio 4 and widely published in magazines and anthologies. She came third in the 2023 Shepton Snowdrops Competition, second in the 2016 Café Writers Competition, and won the 2014 Hamish Canham Prize. Pamphlets: Fledglings (2016), Crippled (2025) (Red Squirrel Press).

Blackbird by Suzanna Fitzpatrick

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.

The judges also gave commendations to Here by Finlay Worrallo; High Street Disappearance by Steve Kendall; and The Rats by Lily Tibbitts. Runners up will receive a certificate and signed copy of Imtiaz Dharker's book 'Shadow Reader’.

Here by Finlay Worrallo

You are here. But where is that
to you? Right between your ears

you flitter like a trapped fly against
the glass of your eyes. Is the back

of your chair digging in? Stand up.
Step out of this brief box

of a room that holds you.
The city runs rings around you

in concentric circles, with you
their common centre. Stand

your ground! Plant your soles
on the back of this current

island, once a peninsula, split
from the continent by the sudden

drowning of Doggerland. Can you see
the seas bubbling round the horizon

or is that beyond you? How wide
are your eyes? No telescopes,

they may not see the glint
of our world’s mote, floating

in a distant sunbeam. Here is
in other words a summit,

a pinprick of rock above the clouds,
for looking down on everything over there,

the othered side, split from us,
the sundered lands beyond

the river, rent from this
our own patch, our place.

A place solid as water. Are you certain you know
where you are? And will you be there tomorrow?

High Street Disappearance by Steve Kendall

He tries to tell the woman in the newsagents
that he is looking for – how to explain?
She has a go at guessing – keys, God, phone, love, wallet.
No. She asks him where he saw it last.

He can’t say. Perhaps, she suggests, it was
an exotic fruit, like a pomegranate or pomelo?
If so, he can be certain it is altogether gone.
He should find a quiet place to sit and grieve.

When he has left, she unfolds a rainbow-
striped camping chair and sets it down
in the middle of the shop, beside the periodicals.
She fetches herself a dish, pours out

a little bag of kumquats, eats them one by one
leafing through a piece in Woman’s Weekly
with recipes for papaya, carambola, sapodilla.

Outside, he stops the passers-by, shows them
photos on a laminated card. They shake their heads.

 
The Rats by Lily Tibbitts

1

Once upon a time, there was a town infested with rats. The pied piper told the townspeople he could get rid of the rats, and so he played his flute and the rats followed him into the river, drowning in the currents, but the townspeople refused to pay the pied piper for his service. He returned to play his flute again. This time, the children followed him. They were lost.

2

Once upon a time, there was a town infested with rats. The pied piper told the townspeople he could get rid of the rats, and so he played his flute and the rats followed him into the river. With their little paws linked, they floated. The song said follow, it didn’t say let go.

3

Once upon a time, there was a town infested with people. The pied piper told the rats he could get rid of the people and the rats said they’re not so bad.

4

Once upon a time, the pied piper bought a flute with a song like honey. His mother used to place a jar of honey on the windowsill. He would dip his finger in and she would smack it away. For the wasps, not for you.

5

There are several meanings to the word lost. Are the children still wandering, music-sodden, over storybook hills? Are they holding hands?

6

I hate euphemisms for death.

7

Once upon a time, there was a man in a green coat with a sleeping bag around his knees, sitting on the street corner. He played the flute and nobody heard him. The rats did. They said keep playing, keep playing, we will follow you anywhere, and in the shadows beneath bins and the cracks between buildings and the warmth within pizza boxes, they danced.

8

The pied piper was a child once too. He was a wasp, wings glued with honey. The river would whisper at him to follow it down, down, down and then there would be clear blue darkness and
he would be filled with water-song and the river would carry him away, away, away and in his lungs it would be syrupy and sweet.

9

Once upon a time, the townspeople and the rats sat down in a room and the rats said why do you want us gone and the townspeople said we hate your kind and the rats said we want to dance like the river and live like the subway trains and the townspeople said somewhere else somewhere else somewhere else but there was nowhere else to go.

10

Rats and children, children and rats, two by two. They will hold hands.

General

1. The Chancellor’s Poetry Prize 2024: Place is open to any current undergraduate or postgraduate student at Newcastle University.
2. The closing date of the competition is 22 March 2024. All entries must be received by submission to https://forms.office.com/e/R022NUu8BQ by no later than 11.30pm on this date; entries will receive a receipt at the time of submission.
3. Any entries arriving after this time will not be considered. 
4. Entrants may only enter one poem.
5. Entries will not be returned, so please keep a copy. 
6. Under no circumstances can alterations be made to poems once entered. 
7. Entrants may withdraw entries from the competition.
8. Newcastle University will not accept responsibility for competition entries that are lost, mislaid, damaged or delayed in transit, regardless of cause, including (for example) technical malfunction, or systems, network, server or computer hardware or software failure of any kind.
9. Proof of transmission will not be accepted as proof of receipt of entry to the competition.
10. Telephone or email confirmation of receipt is not available. Newcastle University is not able to confirm the content of documents submitted, so please ensure you submit the correct version.
11. The competition organisers reserve the right to change the judging panel without notice and not to award prizes if, in the judges’ opinion, such an action is justified.
12. Due to the number of entrants, we are unable to respond individually to submissions. 
13. The judge’s decision is final, and no correspondence will be entered into concerning this decision.

Poems

1. All entries are judged anonymously, and the poet’s name must not appear on the poem itself – please include only your student number on the poem.
2. All poems must have a title and must be between 10 and 30 lines in length. The title is not included in the line count, nor are any blank spaces to indicate stanza or section breaks. Entries should be on the theme of ‘Place’ - written in any style or form.
3. Poems must be the entrant’s original work. Entries submitted posthumously or on behalf of another person will not be eligible.
4. Entries must not have been published, self-published, published on a website, blog, online forum, nor on social media such as Twitter, Facebook or Instagram, nor broadcast, nor have won or been placed (as in 2nd, 3rd, runner-up, etc.) in any other competition before the deadline.
5. Handwritten and postal entries cannot be accepted.
6. The file type of online entries must be either a .doc, .docx or .pdf.
7. Entries must be written in English. 

Winners

1. The winner of the Chancellor's Poetry Prize will receive £250, paid via bank transfer.
2. Prize-winners will be notified by late April 2024. Only successful entrants will be notified.
3. UK based winners will be invited to read their poem at a celebratory an event on Thursday 2 May 2024. International winners will have the option to record a reading of the poem, or if time zones allow, to join the event via live video link.
4. The winner will also be invited to participate in a Newcastle Poetry Festival event on Saturday 11 May.
5. All winners will be expected to provide a short biography and hi-res photograph. 
6. The copyright of each poem remains with the author. However, authors of the winning poems, by entering the competition, grant University, the right in perpetuity to publish and/or broadcast their poem.

Publicity and Personal Information

1. Personal information (including any photographs) supplied by entrants when entering or winning this competition will only be used by the University for marketing and promotional activities.

Congratulations to:

Winner for the poem 'Stepping Stones' - Michael Brown, MPhil Creative Writing, School of English Literature, Language and Linguistics 

Michael’s first collection, Where Grown Men Go, was published by Salt in 2019.  In addition, his pamphlets Undersong (2014) and Locations for a Soul (2016) are available from Eyewear Publishing and Templar respectively. His work has recently been published in Magma, Poetry Wales and Poetry News. 

Commendations

The judges also gave commendations to Oenone Thomas (MA Writing Poetry) for 'Nine Bridges' and Roxanne Clarkson (BA English Literature) for 'swings (and roundabouts)'. Runners up will receive a certificate and signed copy of Imtiaz Dharker's book 'Over the Moon’.

Congratulations to:

Winner for the poem 'Pass' - Kitty Martin, MA Writing Poetry, Poetry School

An actor, theatre maker, communications coach, and poet. Drawn to stories hidden in history, Kitty is currently crafting a series of page and found sound poems from family archive and Manchester Jewish Museum’s oral history collection. Her poetry sound installation will premiere at Newcastle University’s forthcoming Arches Sound Project.

Winner for the poem 'Coastal Home' - Michael Brown, MPhil Creative Writing, School of English Literature, Language and Linguistics 

Michael’s first collection, Where Grown Men Go, was published by Salt in 2019.  In addition, his pamphlets Undersong (2014) and Locations for a Soul (2016) are available from Eyewear Publishing and Templar respectively. His work has recently been published in Magma, Poetry Wales and Poetry News. 

Highly Commended for the poem 'Rough' - Leanna Thomson, BA (Hons) English Literature, School of English Literature, Language and Linguistics

Leanna Thomson is a Cumbrian poet who was shortlisted for the Terry Kelly Poetry Prize in 2020 and published in Newcastle University’s undergraduate anthology this year. She was also Out Of Your Head’s first runner up in April. Leanna’s work draws largely on her own life experiences.

Special mentions 

The judges also gave special mentions to: Jim Lloyd, for Home; Amelia Loulli, for Bed Fourteen; and Mary-Jane Holmes, for Geneaolgy.