Top UK poet to judge Guernsey competition

Friday 17 September 2021

Award winning UK poet Michael Symmons Roberts will judge the 2022 Guernsey International Poetry Competition, which is placing an emphasis on budding young wordsmiths.

The annual competition attracts poets from around the world and the organisers are hoping to better last year’s competition, which had a record entry of more than 2,000 entries.

‘Poems on the Move’ is open to poets of all ages, whether you’ve just started out or you’re a seasoned poet.

Sponsored again by Guernsey Post, the competition is divided into three classes, Open (which carries a first prize of £1,000), Channel Islands (£250) and Young Poet (£250). 

Last year’s competition attracted a high number of entries in the Young Poets’ class for under-18s, and the Guernsey Literary Festival is hoping to build on that increasing engagement, with letters and other promotional materials going out to schools across the Bailiwick.   

The poems are limited to 14 lines, emphasising the need for their language to be succinct and clear. The winner of the 2021 Open Category, was UK poet Ros Woolner with her poem Pruning The Laurel.

The closing date in the search for the next collection of ‘Poems on the Move’ is 15 February next year.

After the difficulties or the last two Covid-dominated years, plans for the 10^th Guernsey Literary Festival next June are already in progress to attract important writers and speakers 

“A religious poet for a secular age” - who is Michael Symmons Roberts?

This year’s judge, Michael Symmons Roberts, Professor of Poetry at Manchester Metropolitan University, has won many accolades for his poetry.

He has been described as ‘a religious poet for a secular age’, and his poetry has won the Forward Prize, the Costa Poetry Prize and the Whitbread Poetry Award, and been shortlisted for the Griffin International Poetry Prize and the T.S. Eliot Prize.

He has received major awards from the Arts Council and the Society of Authors. And his continuing collaboration with composer James MacMillan has led to two BBC Proms choral commissions, song cycles, music theatre works and operas for the Royal Opera House,  Scottish Opera, Boston Lyric Opera and Welsh National Opera.

His 8th poetry collection – Ransom – was published by Cape in March 2021, and he has written two novels.