Record numbers enter poetry competition, and here's the longlist

poetry-longlist-2015 — Hundreds of poems, thousands of words… Photograph © Karen on Flickr

A record number of poets entered the York Literature Festival / YorkMix Poetry Competition 2015.

Altogether 1,736 poems were entered by 461 poets, firmly establishing the competition as one of the nation’s premier poetry events.

Now, after hours of painstaking reading, judge Carole Bromley has selected her longlist of poems.

After more cogitation, Carole will select her shortlist from these poems, to be published on YorkMix soon.

And the winners – including the overall winner who will receive a prize of £400 – will be announced at a gala prize-giving event at York St John University on Saturday, March 28, 2015.

Prizewinners, highly commended and commended poets will be contacted by the organisers by email.

Here are the titles of the poems selected for the longlist. The letter Y in brackets after some titles denotes that the entry is also eligible for the York Prize.

The 2015 longlist

0-B

1973
A chair’s address (Y)
A Wedding (Y)
After Harris Bigg-Wither (Y)
After the War we Move North
Aftermath
All the Dead Voices
Amazing Grace (Y)
An Umbrella for Georgia O’Keefe
Anagram Poem
Apple White
Araschia Levana: How Dock Leaves Work

As a young boy I learned
At Bunhill Fields
At the Bluebird Hairstyling Salon
Barely
Bert’s Pig
Big Picture (Y)
Birth Sonnet
Blackbirds
Bottle Bairns
Bravissimo!
Bull in field, Boggle Hole (Y)
Buttonholed

C-E

Car Bomb
Changeling
Charity Case
Clever Dick and the Church Mouse
“Click” (Beverley)
Cod and Lobster
Collage
Cordelia in Prison
Corporal Yukio Araki
Days (Y)

December 2010 (Starbotton)
Didn’t It Rain?
Dive
Drone Pilot
Dutch School, East Anglia
East London Sonnet
Elegy for J
Elegy for the Green Belt
Ermine Street

F-I

Family Values
Feathers
Flood
focal points
Fragility
From Derwent
Gislebertus Carved Eve
Grammar
Grandmother Wolf (Y)
Guess Who
Gut Instinct
Haiku River (Y)

Home (Y) [Like Hockney, I too saw colour]
How d’yi soart a heedik like Maria?
I can recommend divorce
I didn’t recognise your face anymore (Y)
I hop you are well
I Imagined a Mother Once
In praise of Wensleydale
In Reggio Emilia
In the Dales (Y)
Incident Report
Irish Coffee

K-S

Kings at the Table
Ladybird Knickers
Love Affair, Saltwick Bay (Y)
Magdalene
Mary, Mary
Mr Willett’s Summertime
Norman
On Marston Moor, 2003 (Y)
On New Year’s Eve we gather
On Visiting Dylan’s Shed (Y)
Otavalo
Photograph of Lesley under glass

Red Kite
Revision
Rievaulx Abbey with Elsa
Sawdust Curries (Y)
Scan
Seaside Snaps
Sending a letter home (Y)
Shrinking
Slow Dancing To Electro Funk
Singing the Stone
Sprout
Subsong

T

That Last Afternoon
The Best Gift
The Blossoming, Kopelovo, 1986
The Bothy
The Car Park
The Cowboy & The Showgirl
The Domesticity of Ghosts
The Fall
The gig
The Harlequin (Y)
The kiss

The North [Now the North’s got bistros]
The Orange Girl and the Philosopher
The Perseids
The Violin
The Way He Kept Driving
The Wireless Operator’s Message
This House Looks Like A Bombsite
Tierra del Fuego
Tiny Mouthfuls
Tour de France, Yorkshire 2014 (Y)
Two Blades of Grass for Assia