Delighted to be judging the Michael Murphy Memorial Prize of the English Association  this year with Deryn Rees-Jones and John McAuliffe

Michael Murphy Memorial Prize

The inauguration of a new biennial prize of £500 for a distinctive first book of poetry in English published in Britain or Ireland was announced on National Poetry Day - October 8th - 2010 and the first prize was awarded on National Poetry Day 2011 at a ceremony at Bookmarks Bookshop in London.

The prize was established by colleagues at Nottingham Trent University in honour of the Liverpool-born poet Michael Murphy, who was 43 when he died of a brain tumour in May 2009.

Michael Murphy’s first volume of poetry, After Attila, appeared from Shoestring Press in 1998 when he was 33. Shoestring has published two subsequent collections, Elsewhere (2003) and Allotments (2008), and brought out a posthumous Collected Poems in 2011. In 2001 Michael was awarded the Geoffrey Dearmer Prize by Poetry Review as ‘New Poet of the Year’. The intention of the present prize is to extend the same recognition to another new poet.

Volumes for consideration should have been published between January 2015 and December 2016 and be of book proportions (at least 48 pages in length, with spine and binding). Four copies of each volume should be submitted, one to the Chief Executive of the English Association and one to each of the judges.

Closing date for entries: 1 March 2017

Judges: Professor Deryn Rees-Jones, University of Liverpool, Professor Karen Leeder, New College, Oxford, John McAuliffe, University of Manchester

The shortlist will be announced in June 2017 and the winner will be announced on National Poetry Day 28 September 2017.