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The Papers are 104!

The 104th edition of The Frogmore Papers has now been published and is available from The Frogmore Press (still only £5.00, post free). The issue includes all ten poems shortlisted for this year’s Frogmore Poetry Prize, which was adjudicated by Graham Mort, including the winning poem by Kathy Miles (see below), alongside new poetry from the likes of Sharon Black, Maggie Butt, Robert Hamberger, Maitreyabandhu, Christine McNeill, Jackie Wills and Lynne Wycherley (to name but a few), prose from H Alder, Robert Charles and Mark Levy, and the usual clutch of reviews of recent publications from the world of poetry.

The Frogmore Papers No. 104, cover designed by Eva Bodinet

German artist Eva Bodinet has created another memorable cover for the issue. Julia Casterton (1952 – 2007) is the writer featured in the ‘From the Archive’ section, and our 104th edition also includes what may prove to be one of the last poems by the Irish poet Fred Johnston, a frequent contributor to the Papers, who very sadly died unexpectedly earlier this month.

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Poetry Prize adjudicator 2025 announced

The 39th Frogmore Prize will be adjudicated by the poet John Greening.

John has previously been awarded the Alexandria International Poetry Prize, the Bridport Prize and the TLS Centenary Prize. His poem ‘Sibelius’ was selected by Carol Rumens as her Poem of the Week in 2021 and Contraflow: Lines of Englishness, 1922 – 2022 was named a best poetry book of the year by Rishi Distidar in The Guardian and Graeme Richardson in the Sunday Times. He will read all entries.

The deadline for submissions is 31 May 2025. Full details at: www.frogmorepress.co.uk/frogmore-poetry-prize/frogmore-poetry-prize-subguides/

This year’s Prize (2024), adjudicated by Graham Mort, was won by Kathy Miles with her poem ‘After a Termination on Medical Grounds’. Runners-up were Pamela Job and Ben Verinder.

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morphrog 29 lands

The 29th edition of morphrog is now live at www.morphrog.com. Contributors are:

Michael Bartholomew-Biggs, retired mathematician and current poetry editor of the online magazine London Grip. His latest collection is Identified Flying Objects (Shoestring, 2024).

Tom Barwell Poet, psychotherapist and coach Tom Barwell. Recently published in Does It Have Pockets and Poetica Review.

James Owens whose poems and translations appear widely in literary journals, including recent or upcoming publications in Channel, Arc, Dalhousie Review, Queen’s Quarterly, and Atlanta Review. He earned an MFA at the University of Alabama and lives in a small town in Ontario, Canada. His latest publication is Family Portrait with Scythe (Bottom Dog Press, 2020).

Gordon Scapens, widely published over many years in numerous magazines, journals, anthologies and competitions, most recently winning the Brian Nesbit Poetry Award.

Sanjeev Sethi has authored seven books of poetry. His latest is Wrappings in Bespoke (The Hedgehog Poetry Press, UK, August 2022). He edited Dreich Planet #1, an anthology for Hybriddreich, Scotland, in December 2022. He is the joint winner of the Full Fat Collection Competition-Deux, organized by Hedgehog Poetry Press, UK. He lives in Mumbai, India.

John Short lives near Liverpool again after a previous life in southern Europe. He reads at venues in Liverpool, Chester and beyond. His work has appeared in over 80 magazines and anthologies, and he was a Pushcart nominee in 2018. His latest poetry collection is In Search of a Subject (Cerasus, 2023).

J.S. Watts is a British poet and novelist who weaves the fantastical and the literary with other vibrant strands to create glowing, multi-faceted writing. Originally from London, she now lives in Cambridgeshire. Her three poetry collections, Cats and Other Myths, Years Ago You Coloured Me and Underword, are published by Lapwing Publications, as is her multi-award nominated SF poetry pamphlet, Songs of Steelyard Sue. Her novels are published in the US and UK by Vagabondage Press.

Submissions are invited for morphrog 30, which will be published in January.

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38th Frogmore Prize heads west to Wales

Kathy Miles from Aberaeron, Ceredigion has been awarded the 38th annual Frogmore Poetry Prize by adjudicator Graham Mort for her poem ‘After a Termination on Medical Grounds’.

Born in Liverpool, Kathy has lived in Wales since 1972. She worked for many years at the University of Wales, Trinity Saint David, where she also completed an MA in Creative Writing. Her fourth collection of poetry, Bone House, was published by Indigo Dreams in 2020, and her latest collection, Vanishing Point, was published earlier this year by Palewell Press. Commenting on the process of adjudicating the Prize, Graham Mort said: ‘I avoided poems that explained themselves, trying to choose those that yielded up further meanings or significance, that burned brightest in my own consciousness, remaining irreducible. I wanted to acknowledge adventure in theme, form and language, to find transformative endings that left my own visions active in the lingering aura of the poem.’

The Frogmore Papers 104. Cover art by Eva Bodinet

First runner-up was Pamela Job from Wivenhoe, Essex, with her poem ‘Nikolai Astrup shows a rare visitor around his village’, inspired by an exhibition of the work of Norwegian artist Nikolai Astrup at the Dulwich Picture Gallery. Second runner-up was Ben Verinder from Tring, Hertfordshire, with his poem ‘The Marfa Lights’. His poem ‘Dilapidations’ also reached the shortlist of ten. Other shortlisted poets were Jane Davidson, Tim Dwyer, Kate Horsley, Sarah Salway, Thea Smiley and Vivienne Tregenza.

Their poems will all be published in the September edition of The Frogmore Papers, available from The Frogmore Press for only £5.00, including post & packing.

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Deadline looms for Frogmore Prize entries: 31 May 2024

The deadline for entries to this year’s Prize (31 May 2024) is fast approaching. Adjudicator Graham Mort will read all submissions. Full details are available at: www.frogmorepress.co.uk/frogmore-poetry-prize

The Prize was established in 1987 with a generous endowment from André Evans in his capacity as President of the Frogmore Foundation. John Rice, then Director of the New Metropole Arts Centre in Folkestone (and also a widely published poet in his own right) was persuaded to adjudicate, conditions of entry were drafted, and we were ready to roll. There may or may not have been a good reason for the decision to award the prize money in guineas rather than pounds sterling. This may or may not have been because 25 guineas sounded more desirable as booty than 25 pounds. Whatever the grounds, once the principle was established, it became a defining feature of the Prize, though the booty has multiplied tenfold over its thirty-seven years and now stands at a more impressive 250 guineas. Not that it has ever been about anything quite as vulgar as cash, albeit cash paid in guineas. Kudos, we hoped, would be the lure, and so it ultimately proved, with increasing numbers of submissions from poets whose names were recognised and whose work encountered in publications of note (though reputation counts for little when entries are judged anonymously, as they have been since the Prize’s inauguration).

David Satherley won that first Prize back in 1987, and Lynda Plater won last year. Between them there have been a series of notable winners, with John Latham and Howard Wright both winning twice, Caroline Price three times and Emily Wills on an astonishing four occasion! In every case, the Prize was awarded by a different adjudicator on each occasion, surely testament to the skill and craft of these poets.

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The Papers’ 103rd edition in their 41st year

Cover art by Arusyak Pivazyan, inspired Paul Truan’s poem ‘Tones’

The Frogmore Papers’ 103rd edition is published this month. It’s another international number, featuring a striking cover by Armenian artist Arusyak Pivazyan (inspired by a poem from Cornish poet Paul Truan), translations of Georges Brassens by Michael Swan and the Belgian poet Marc Tritsmans by John Irons, poems by Peter Bakowski (Australia) and Christine Hennemann (Ireland) and a short story by Stephen Silvester (Canada). Closer to home, there is also work by Mike Barlow, Vuyelwa Carlin, John Greening, Stuart Henson, Myra Schneider, Paul Stephenson and a host of others. ‘From the Archive’ features a 1997 poem by Tobias Hill, who, sadly, died last year. Several of his early poems appeared in the Papers, and Tobias was awarded the Frogmore Prize in 1995 by Linda France for his poem ‘Flora and the Admiral’.

The Frogmore Papers are available post-free (£5.00) from The Frogmore Press or from Skylark, the independent bookshop in the Needlemakers, Lewes. Subscription rates to the Papers have remained at £10.00 for one year, £15.00 for two years since 2010.

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Kokopelli looms large in morphrog’s 28th number 

The 28th edition of morphrog is now live at www.morphrog.com  In addition to new work by Yorkshire poets Jenny Hockey and A D W Kerr, California-based James Piatt and Geoffrey Winch, awarded the accolade of the UK’s best Small Press Poet by Purple Patch magazine in 2011, morphrog 28 features an extended sequence of poems about Kokopelli, the joker god of the Native American pantheon in the South-Western United States, by renowned poet, translator and grammarian Michael Swan, a former winner of the Times’ Stephen Spender Prize.  

Submissions are invited for morphrog 29, which will go live in July.  

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Into autumn with Frogmore Papers No.102

September 2023 sees the publication of The Frogmore Papers’ 102nd edition. Ukrainian artist Marysya Rudska has created a stunning cover for the issue, inspired by Fred Johnson’s poem ‘Language’.

LANGUAGE

A wicker chair gone a hundred years into
mauve cold. In the old wood,

mice shiver like censers
swinging. The man there watches

a long stuck clock of road.
Folds arthritic hands and thinks

of nothing, really—only,
it’s snowing. That is to say,

the sun is a bone.

Thinks, now there’s something:

prints in the white clean. A red doe
limping, speaking.

Other contributors include poets John Freeman, Christine McNeill, John Mole and Graham Mort and Armenian artist Arusyak Pivazyan. All ten poems shortlisted for this year’s Frogmore Prize by Helena Nelson are published, including Lynda Plater’s winning poem and those by runners-up Alison Binney and Christoper Horton. The issue also includes new work by previous Prize winners Sharon Black, Margaret Wilmot and Howard Wright, and, in the ‘From the Archive’ section, a poem by Andrew Waterhouse, first published in number 46 of the Papers in 1995.

Copies are available for £5.00 (post and packing free) from The Frogmore Press, 21 Mildmay Road, Lewes, East Sussex BN7 1PJ. Subscriptions remain at £10.00 for one year, £15.00 for two years. Email frogmorepress@gmail.com for details of how to pay by bank transfer or PayPal.

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Poetry Prize adjudicator announced

Adjudicator announced

The 38th Frogmore Poetry Prize will be adjudicated by writer and Emeritus Professor of Creative Writing and Transcultural Literature Graham Mort. Graham is the author of ten full-length poetry collections, most recently Black Shiver Moss (Seren, 2017)  and three collections of short fiction, most recently Like Fado and Other Stories (Salt, 2021). He has also written BBC radio drama. Graham has read his work widely across the UK and overseas in South Africa, Uganda, Vietnam and China. 

The deadline for submissions is 31 May 2024. Full details at:  http://www.frogmorepress.co.uk/frogmore-poetry-prize

This year’s Prize (2023), adjudicated by Helena Nelson, was won by Lynda Plater with her poem ‘The Revd. Michael Woolf on his way to a parishioner in need’. Runners-up were Alison Binney and Christopher Horton.

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morphrog 27 goes live

The latest edition of morphrog is now live at www.morphrog.com, featuring poetry and prose by a roster of contributors from around the world. Work by familiar names – Angela Arnold, Ian Heffernan, Gordon Scapens, Gerald Seniuk, Ian C Smith, Rodney Wood – is complemented by contributions from newcomers Ben Banyard, Salvatore Difalco, Vyarka Kozareva, Massimiliano Nastri, James Owens, the pseudonymous sds and John White, whose poem ‘Picnic at St Catherine’s Guidlford’ is accompanied by a photograph of the event itself by Fred Pipes.

Number 27 is an especially varied edition, including as it does a  long poem about the story of Ukraine by Canadian poet Gerald Seniuk, himself of Ukrainian heritage, Ian Heffernan’s poems inspired by the work of Tang Dynasty poet Li Bai and republication of Luigi Coppola’s poem ‘Poetry Set to Music’, now set to music! Submissions for morphrog 28 (January 2024) are now open. Send no more than six poems, accompanied by a bio note and headshot, to morphrog@gmail.com