James Berry Poetry Prize 2024 Shortlist Reading
Bloodaxe Books and Newcastle Centre for the Literary Arts hosted a special online event on Wednesday 20 November 2024 with readings from the winning, shortlisted and commended poets in the 2024 James Berry Poetry Prize. The event included the announcement of the three winners - Clementine Ewokolo Burnley, Nadine El-Enany and Roshni Gallagher - whose debut book-length collections will be published by Bloodaxe in 2026.
Watch our YouTube channel, or via the embedded video below.
Full details of the winning, shortlisted and commended poets for the James Berry Poetry Prize 2024 are on our news page here.
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Launched in 2021, the James Berry Poetry Prize is Britain’s first and only poetry prize offering both expert mentoring and book publication for young or emerging poets of colour. Its joint organisers are Newcastle University and Bloodaxe Books.
The three equal winners of the James Berry Poetry Prize 2024 each receive year-long mentoring during 2024-25 plus £1000 and publication of their debut book length collections with Bloodaxe in 2026. The 2024 winning poets will be mentored by poets Patience Agbabi, Karen McCarthy Woolf, and Jacob Sam-La Rose, one of the judges of the 2021 inaugural prize. There are five judges for the 2024 prize: Neil Astley, founding editor of Bloodaxe Books; poet Imtiaz Dharker, holder of the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry and Chancellor of Newcastle University; poet Theresa Muñoz, director of Newcastle Poetry Festival and James Berry Poetry Prize manager; Nathalie Teitler, diversity specialist and director of The Complete Works; and poet and professor Major Jackson, who holds the Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Chair in the Humanities at Vanderbilt University in the US and has worked with Newcastle University on previous projects including Freedom City.
The winners of the inaugural James Berry Poetry Prize were Kaycee Hill, who was mentored by Malika Booker; Marjorie Lotfi, mentored by Mimi Khalvati; and Yvette Siegert, mentored by Mona Arshi. Kaycee Hill’s debut collection, Hot Sauce, and Marjorie Lotfi’s The Wrong Person to Ask were published by Bloodaxe Books in November 2023. The debut collection by the third winner, Yvette Siegert, will be published in 2026. Marjorie Lotfi's The Wrong Person to Ask was a Poetry Book Society Special Commendation. It won the Felix Dennis Prize for Best First Collection 2024, one of the Forward Prizes, and is on the longlist for the poetry category of the Saltire Book Awards 2024.
More information about the James Berry Poetry Prize can be found here.
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James Berry Poetry Prize 2024, Wednesday 20 November 2024, 7pm, online event.
Special online event featuring readings by the 2024 James Berry Poetry Prize shortlisted and commended poets. The three joint winners were announced at this event, hosted by co-judges Theresa Muñoz and Imtiaz Dharker.
This free poetry event can now be viewed on this YouTube page: https://youtube.com/live/HhuB8YR8b_4
[23 October 2024]
