Debra Marquart’s long poem, “Leave it in the Ground,” selected from international pool for shortlist honors. Winners in both categories (poetry and fiction) will be announced at a gala in Manchester UK on December 8th.
The Poetry Prize judging panel is chaired by Malika Booker, award-winning poet who recently won Forward Prize for Best Single Poem, and Lecturer in Creative Writing at Manchester Met.
About the shortlist, Booker wrote: “What unites this year’s shortlisted portfolios is their remarkable singularity. The poems we have chosen both attend to and break with form, irrepressible in their varied approaches to movements and turns. These risk-taking poems disrupt our expectations at every turn, by pushing at the limits of language, with intertextual depth.
“History, violence, kinship, wit, humour, and tenderness flow through these poems, as they illuminate the mundane and spectacular, their imagery lingering with the reader long after the last line. These are disarming poems, haunting poems, ones which sneak up on you, confronting your expectations and defences. They reveal themselves anew, again and again. These outstanding poems that demonstrate the quality of contemporary poetry.”
