The shortlist for the £5,000 best first collection prize includes Dan O'Brien's War Reporter, inspired by interviews he conducted with a Pulitzer prize-winning journalist. Also in the running are collections published by two tiny presses – Adam White's Accurate Measurements is published by Doire Press in Connemara, while Steve Ely's collection, Oswald's Book of Hours, is published by Smokestack Press in Middlesborough. They are pitted against three of the biggest publishers in UK poetry: Faber & Faber for Emily Berry's Dear Boy – a wittily disturbing soliloquy; Bloodaxe Books for Hannah Lowe's Chick; and Seren Books for She Inserts the Key, a collection that juxtaposes sparrowhawks and the Bank of England, crafted by former City solicitor Marianne Burton.
The chair of judges, Jeanette Winterson, hailed a "powerful year for poetry".
For more see today’s
Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2013/jul/08/forward-poetry-prize-shortlists-2013
Adam was a Featured Reader at the May 2012 Over The Edge: Open Reading. Big congratulations to him and to John Walsh and Lisa Frank of Doire Press.
