The Academi Cardiff International Poetry Competition 2000

2000 Winners

Five 4th Places each winning £200
Robert Saxton, London -Scouting For Lovers
Anthony Foakes, Stratford-Upon-Avon - Communicating
Anna Wigley, Cardiff - The Bird Hospital
Lynne Rees, Kent - Moving On
James Sutherland-Smith, Slovak Republic - March Adder

3rd Place winning £300
Olivia Anna Jose, Nottingham - Many Happy Returns

2nd Place winning £700
Sheenagh Pugh, Cardiff - Toast

First Prize - winning £3000
Victor Tapner, Essex - Kalashnikov

Since it was established fourteen year ago the Welsh Academy's Cardiff International Poetry Competition has become one of the biggest in Britain. This year's prizes have been increased to offer the author of the winning poem an outstanding 1st prize of £3000, a splendid reward for the creation of a new piece of verse. In addition there are awards of £700 for 2nd or £300 for 3rd along with a further five prizes of £200. All entries to the Competition were judged anonymously. This, of course, is one of the great reasons for entering poetry competitions in the first place. You may tell yourself that it is the money you are after (and £3000 in exchange for a £4 stake represents quite good odds) or you may be convinced that it is the kudos of actually coming out on top that drives you. The reality is more likely that for once in your writing career the playing field has been leveled. No one moves forward because of whom they are, whom they know or what their name sounds like. Your poems, for all you know, go into the same heap as those of Seamus Heaney, Andrew Motion, U A Fanthorpe, Carol Ann Duffy and Benjamin Zephaniah. Names are removed. The judges make their evaluations on the quality of the work alone. If your poem is any good then it is that consideration that will move it on. "The true bards will be sorted from the vagabonds", they will be indeed. The Academi 2000 Cardiff International Poetry Competition offers a very level playing field, a large cash prize, publication in one of the country's leading literary journals, appearance on the web, publicity, kudos and a feeling that you've actually managed to get somewhere real with a single poem. Don't waste time.

The closing date for the 2000 Competition was 30th June, 2000. The prizes were announced at a ceremony held at the Sherman Theatre, Cardiff on 17th October

 

JUDGES

WENDY COPE was born in 1945 in Erith, Kent. She read history at St. Hilda's College, Oxford then went on to do a year's post-graduate teacher training. She worked as a full-time primary teacher, eventually becoming head of a school in the Old Kent Road. She is now a freelance writer and one of the few poets to feature in the Sunday Times best-sellers list and to have her work reproduced on the underground, on T-shirts, on mugs and posters. She is one of the most popular poets writing today.
Wendy Cope started her writing career in 1973. In 1979 her work began to appear in the TLS, and other periodicals. Her first collection of poems Making Cocoa For Kingsley Amis (Faber) went straight into the bestseller lists. In 1987 she won a Cholmondeley Award for poetry. In 1988 her book of hand-rhymes for young children appeared, Twiddling Your Thumbs (Faber) and in 1991 The River Girl, a narrative poem commissioned by the Movingstage Marionette Company for performance on their theatre barge. In 1993 she was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and in 1995 she won the American Academy of Letters Michael Braude Award for Light Verse.
Wendy's most recent collection of poems are Serious Concerns (Faber) and The Funny Side (Faber). She also edited The Faber Book of Bedtime Stories, which appeared in 1999.

ROGER McGOUGH sprang to fame in the Sixties as one of the upbeat, pop, iconoclastic Liverpool Poets and is now one of the best known and best selling poets in Britain. Born in Liverpool in 1937, he was educated at St. Mary's College and at the University of Hull.
A one-time teacher, he went on to become a performer, singer and songwriter with the group Scaffold, but he is primarily famous as a poet and has published many books of poems including Melting into the Foreground, Summer with Monika, Defying Gravity and Selected Poems 1967 - 1987 (published in two volumes; Vol. 1 Blazing Fruit and Vol. 2 You at the Back). He is also well-known for his poems for children and has published several highly acclaimed volumes; the most recent of which are Pillow Talk and Lucky. His hit collection of 2000 is The Way Things Are (Viking).
Now an international ambassador for poetry, he was awarded an OBE for his work in 1987. Roger lives with his wife Hilary and his two youngest children in Barnes, West London.

Previous Competition Winners include Ben Rice (London), Sheenagh Pugh (Cardiff), Antony Dunn (York), Diana Sabot (Maine, USA), Dr Charles Bennett (Warwick), Alison Spritzler-Rose (London), Philip Gross (Bristol), Glenda Began (Rhyl), Duncan Bush (Luxembourg), Margaret Ann Speak (York), David Annwn (Wakefield), Nigel Jenkins (Swansea), Ann Drysdale (Blaina), Cathal L Dallat (London), Pete Morgan (Shillington), Bill James (Sully), Gavin Bantock (Japan), Abi Hughes-Edwards (Narberth), Victoria Pugh (Reading), Jem Poster (Oxford), and Robert Hamberger (Leicester). The 1999 Competition winner was Elizabeth Kay (Surrey), second was Linda Chase (Manchester), and third Jan Jenkins (London).