Rory Waterman & Hive New Poets Prize Winners Reading
Rory Waterman & Hive New Poets Prize Winners Reading
Over the last 8 years, Hive Young Writers Network has nurtured many fine emerging South Yorkshire poets including an incredible 8 winners of the International New Poets Prize for writers aged 17 to 24. Join poets from this list, including 2024 highly commended Sheffield Young Writer Charlie Jolley, and 2022 winner Beth Davies, for a glorious reading of new and prize-winning work. Carcanet poet and critic Rory Waterman will introduce the evening and read from his latest work.
Sunday 20th Oct 6.30pm doors | starts 6.50pm to 8/8.30pm | Venue update: Performance Lab, SHU Arundel Gate, Sheffield | 4 mins from Train/Bus Station | Tickets: £6/£3 | Eventbrite | This event followed a writers’ day workshop masterclass with Rory Waterman, details here
In partnership with Off the Shelf
Hive New Poets winners over the years: Warda Yassin (2018), Safia Khan (2021), Lauren Hollingsworth Smith (2020), Georgie Woodhead (2020), Beth Davies (2022), Luke Worthy (2023) Freya Bantiff (2023) Charlie Jolley (2024)
Rory Waterman’s collections, all published by Carcanet, are: Tonight the Summer’s Over (2013; PBS Recommendation, shortlisted for a Seamus Heaney Award); Sarajevo Roses (2017; shortlisted for Ledbury Forte Prize); Sweet Nothings (2020); and, most recently, Come Here to This Gate (2024), described in the Guardian as ‘a wise and deeply satisfying book’. He is on the English and Creative Writing faculty at NTU, writes regularly for the TLS and other publications, and co-edits New Walk Editions. Author website: www.rorywaterman.com
The New Poets Prize is a pamphlet competition for writers between the ages of 17 and 24. The prize was launched in 2015 and runs annually alongside the renowned Poetry Business International Book & Pamphlet Competition, which has now been established for 38 years. Previous judges of the New Poets Prize include Helen Mort, Andrew McMillan, Kayo Chingonyi, Mary Jean Chan, Luke Kennard and Kim Moore. Winners of the New Poets Prize have gone on to publish full-length collections with notable publishers, including Carcanet and Bloodaxe Books, have been appointed as workshop facilitators, editors-in-residence, and competition judges (such as for the Forward Prizes), have launched and performed their pamphlets on national radio and at prestigious venues, and have been widely reviewed.
Charlie Jolley is a young poet and fiction writer. She is a top 15 winner of the Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award, 2023 & 2024. In 2023 she was also the winner of the Waltham Forest Young Poets Prize, the Hexham Young People’s Poetry Competition, and the Poem:99 Poetry Competition, as well as placing second in the East Riding Festival of Words, and the Charles Causley Young Poets Prize. She has been published by The Poetry Society, Zoetic Press, and in Hive anthologies Dear Life, After Hours, The Camellia House & Other Stories. She is an alumnus of Sheffield Young Writers and a member of Hive Poetry Collective.
Highly commended in the New Poets Prize 2024: Judge Holly Hopkins said of ‘The Dreamers’
“Charlie Jolley’s The Dreamers demonstrates a talent for dramatic monologues which directs the reader to consider different moments in history and how they relate politically and emotionally.”
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Luke Worthy is a queer poet and fiction writer living between Sheffield and Amsterdam. His work has appeared in Poetry Wales, fourteen poems, East of the North (The Poetry Business), Queer Responses to Dante’s Inferno (Carrion Press), Soapbox Journal, Arji’s Poetry Pickle Jar, and anthologised in various books including After Hours & Surfing the Twilight (Hive Books), and Broken Sleep’s Masculinity: an anthology of modern voices. He was commissioned by the British Library and Leeds 2023 to write a piece of children’s literature for the Northern Dreaming anthology. He was a digital poet-in-residence for The Poetry Business in 2022, a young poet-in-residence for Sheaf Poetry Festival 2023, and a shadow judge for the Forward Prize 2024.
A winner of the New Poets Prize 2023: Judge Kim Moore said of ‘On What Could String’:
“From a jellyfish like a ‘tumour of salt and sand’ to a meditation on Putin’s penis and toxic masculinity – these poems are full of surprising images and wide-ranging in their interrogations – of class, sexuality, homophobia and masculinity.
Freya Bantiff is a Sheffield poet who recently placed third in the National Poetry Competition 2022 and was highly commended in the Ginkgo Prize for Ecopoetry 2022. She was joint winner of the 2022 Bridport Poetry Prize (18-25s) (while being highly commended in their overall competition) and winner of the Canterbury Poet of the Year Competition 2021. Freya’s poems and stories have been placed in the Aesthetica Creative Writing Award (2021), Mslexia Flash Fiction Competition (2020), Ilkley Literature Festival’s Poetry Competition (2010 – 2015) and Foyle Young Poet of the Year (2015), along with many others. She has an MA in Poetry from UEA and was Apprentice Poet in Residence at Ilkley Literature Festival 2023.
A winner of the New Poets Prize 2023: Judge Kim Moore said on “All Appears Ordinary”:
‘Nothing is truly ordinary in this extraordinary pamphlet, where owls are ‘light as an eyelash blown for luck’ … These poems keep the faith that language can illuminate anything – from everyday acts of love like the removal of nits from a child’s head to the extinction of a species.’
Beth Davies’ debut pamphlet, The Pretence of Understanding, was published by The Poetry Business in 2023 after winning the 2022 New Poets Prize. She will soon be taking on the mantle of the 2024-26 Sheffield Poet Laureate. Beth won second place in the 2021 Dead Cat Poetry Prize and in the 2022 Magdalena Young Poets’ Prize. Her poetry has been published in Poetry Wales, Ink Sweat & Tears, Candlestick Press’ Ten Poems about Flowers, and Valley Press’ Verse Matters. In addition to being a member of Hive Poetry Collective, Beth is a graduate of The Writing Squad, Durham University Slam Team, and Sheffield Young Writers.
A winner of the New Poets Prize 2022: Judge Anthony Anaxagorou said of ‘The Pretence of Understanding’:
“A beautifully strange and encoded book. I was particularly drawn to the tensions made between a place and a self – the longing to connect while remaining cautious as to what that connection asked for.”
Safia Khan is a newly qualified doctor and poet. Her debut pamphlet (Too Much Mirch, Smith | Doorstop) won the 2021 New Poet’s Prize. Her work has been published in various journals and anthologies including The North, BATH MAGG, Poetry Wales, Introduction X: The Poetry Business Book of New Poets (New Poets List), We’re All in It Together: Poems for a disUnited Kingdom (Grist), Dear Life (Hive), Surfing the Twilight (Hive). She has been commissioned to write poetry for the University of Huddersfield and The British Library. Safia has performed her work widely, including as a headliner for Off The Shelf Festival. She has delivered poetry workshops for The Poetry Business, and seminars for the University of Oxford on the role of poetry as patient advocacy. Safia has been invited to deliver a creative writing teaching series with Nottingham Trent University’s WRAP Program, as their featured writer for 2023.
Lauren Hollingsworth-Smith is a poet and artist based in Rotherham and Oxford. Her work has been published in various anthologies including She Will Soar (Pan Macmillan 2020), Dear Life & After Hours (Hive Books). Her debut pamphlet Ugly Bird was a winner of the New Poets Prize 2020. In 2019 she was a Foyle Young Poet of the Year and was highly commended in the Young Northern Writers’ Award. Lauren has performed at various events and festivals, including Ledbury and Kendal Poetry Festivals and Off the Shelf Festival of Words. Look How Alive is Lauren’s debut full-length collection (Published by Write bloody in 2022)
A winner of the New Poets Prize 2020: Judge Luke Kennard said of ‘Ugly Bird’:
“Hollingsworth-Smith’s poems are immediately and joyfully readable even at their darkest, and Ugly Bird is full of masterful juxtapositions, emotional swerves and perfect details (the angle of an OHP, the plastic tiara prongs). It’s such a skill to navigate these waters with such attentiveness; defiant, ecstatic powers of observation transfiguring the ordinary with wit and self-awareness.”
Warda Yassin is an award-winning British born Somali poet and secondary school teacher based in Sheffield. She was a winner of the 2018 New Poets Prize for her debut pamphlet Tea with Cardamom (Poetry Business, published 2019). Her poetry has been published in places like The North, Magma and Oxford Poetry, and anthologised in Verse Matters (Valley Press), Anthology X (Smith|Doorstep), More Fiyah (Cannongate) & Surfing the Twilight (Hive). She won 2020 Womens Poet Prize and was the Sheffield Poet Laureate from 2020-2022. She is a member of Hive poetry collective.
A winner of the New Poets Prize 2018: Judge Kayo Chingonyi said of ‘Tea With Cardamon’
These poems struck me as wonderfully contemporary while gesturing towards something ancient in their frequent recourse to that which is passed down, as well as that which we improvise as our own pathways unfold. The poems invoke a world within a world making for a multi-layered perspective on life in the UK at the present moment.
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A winner of the New Poets Prize 2020: Judge Luke Kennard said of ‘Takeaway’
Takeaway is a vivid and powerful collection. Expansive but precise lines and stanzas give Woodhead the space to explore the lives and scenes they depict. So many of the images here are breathtaking and will really stay with me. ‘Harry Collins’ is such a vivid, poignant and angry character study and the title poem alone was enough to convince me that I was in the presence of a significant and urgent new voice. Uncompromising in its depiction of brutalities without ever sacrificing the humanity and compassion of the poet’s vision.