Winners announced of Morecambe Poetry Festival competition

The competition was open to poems on any theme, and received a huge number of entries from across the UK and around the world.

The winning poets will now have the opportunity to share their work at the Morecambe Poetry Festival over the weekend of September 20-22.

The Sunday Times bestselling author and the UK’s number 1 bestselling poet Donna Ashworth judged the entries, ahead of her own appearance at the festival.

Donna said: “This was so much harder than I anticipated because very few of these poems didn’t not leave a mark on my heart but these are the ones I absolutely adore for personal and heartfelt reasons.”

The competition was run by the Poets, Prattlers, and Pandemonialists collective and offered.prizes for the top three entries and a prize for the winning entry from a Morecambe based poet.

1st prize

This knitting by Christine Michael

2nd prize

Tell me you don’t like poetry by Nelly Bryce

3rd prizes

Weeds by Stephen Banks

Ordnance Survey tattoos by Georgia Bartlett-McNeil

Tap dancing by Cathy Shaw

Morecambe prize

Learning to glide by Trystan Lewis

The winning poets will be invited to video record their poems, where they will be hosted on https://pandemonialists.co.uk/

Trystan Lewis said: “I'd genuinely forgotten how much I love poetry and spoken word performance until I was at the 2022 Morecambe Poetry Festival.

"Since then, I have performed at over 40 open mics and slams from Kendal and Lancaster to Huddersfield and all around Manchester.

"The festival was a massive inspiration to me and gave me a whole new direction so I'm really overjoyed to be the Local Winner of the inaugural Morecambe poetry festival competition in 2024.”

The following poets also made it onto the final shortlist for the main competition: Lisette Abrahams, David Bleiman, Louise Cummings, Robin Dalglish, Kelly Davis, Christian Donovan, Jane James, Alan Mansell, Daniel Moreschi, Martin Palmer, Leila Platt, Lucy Power, Kathryn Ratzko, Peter Shukie, Geraldine Snape, Laura Strickland, Deirdre Sullivan, David Swann.

Appearing at this year’s festival will be Mike Harding, Pam Ayres, Donna Ashworth, Alistair McGowan, Lemn Sissay MBE, Henry Normal, Thick Richard, Raymond Antrobus, Tony Walsh, Kate Fox, Emma Purshouse, Steve Pottinger and Chris Lynam.

Tickets for the individual shows by the headline poets starting from £20 are now available from the festival’s ticketing page on Skiddle.

The BBC is also bringing two of its leading Radio 4 spoken word and performance shows to the festival.

Loose Ends will take place Friday September 20 at 6pm and The Verb presented by Ian McMillan will take place on Saturday September 21 5.45pm to 7pm.

Both events are free to attend, with weekend ticket holders receiving first preference.

Weekend passes £65 standard / £80 premium. Individual show tickets are £20 standard / £25 premium.

Morecambe Poetry Festival is supported by Waterstones, T S Eliot Foundation, Morecambe Town Council, Eden Project Communities, Wordsworth Grasmere and the Arts Council.

Keep up to date on Morecambe Poetry Festival Facebook.

Tickets available from Skiddle at https://www.skiddle.com/whats-on/Lancaster/Morecambe-Winter-Gardens/Morecambe-Poetry-Festival-2024/37266443/