Crabbe Poetry Competition 2022 results

The adjudicator for the 2022 competition was Blake Morrison.

Blake Morrison was born in Skipton, Yorkshire, and educated at Nottingham University, McMaster University and University College, London. After working for the Times Literary Supplement, he went on to become literary editor of both The Observer and the Independent on Sunday before becoming a full-time writer in 1995. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and former Chair of the Poetry Book Society and Vice-Chair of PEN, Blake has written fiction, poetry, journalism, literary criticism and libretti, as well as adapting plays for the stage. His best-known works are probably his two memoirs, “And When Did You Last See Your Father?” and “Things My Mother Never Told Me.”

Since 2003, Blake has been Professor of Creative and Life Writing at Goldsmiths College.

Prize‐Winning Poems

First Prize

Shelling Broad Beans – Philip Baker

Second Prize

They beheaded my father this morning – Roger West

Third Prize

My Grandmother Visits the Father She’s Never Known (1883) – Caroline Gilfillan

Highly Commended Poems

• Hotel Alexandra – Ian Colin
• Grey – André Mangeot

Commended Poems

• Reading to Paul – Philip Baker
• We Called Him Captain Hook – Anne Boileau
• Lubricity – Stewart Francis
• Death Mask – Sue Garratt
• Underwood Hardware & D.I.Y Ltd – David Healey
• Orpheus – Jane Henderson
• Pylon – Graham J High
• The Piano on the Northern Line – Christopher James
• Snake Charm – Pam Job
• Learning the Language – Pat Jourdan
• Tailbone – Esther Morgan
• I turn my face – Jen Overett
• College Versus Knowledge – Cro Page
• Missing Brilliance – Fran Reader
• To the Sheringham Shoal Offshore Turbines – Margaret Seymour
• like a sonnet – Roger West
• Backflip – Tessa West
• Essex Girls – Judith Wozniak

Honourable Mentions

• No Complications – Philip Baker
• It Was Not Against The Law – Anne Boileau
• Fire Tree – Frank Dullaghan
• Refugees – Sally E Gardner
• Elegy for a Suffolk Farmer – David Healey
• Glimpse – Sara Impey
• Milton’s Daughters – Pat Jourdan
• Behind Every Woman is a Great Pair of Jeans – Fran Reader
• Chacun à son Mimosa – Roger West