If you are a poet who entered the Rosemary McLeish Poetry Prize, then here's the news you've been waiting for - our longlist of 15 poems.
Words from Sarah Hehir - this year's judge:
I wake early and take my shortlist of poems into the garden to read once again. It’s sunny. There’s a rare bee buzzing amongst the flowers of a bush I’m ashamed I don’t know the name of. I’m pretty sure Rosemary would have been able to tell me what it is. And then my mind drifts to the photos of cakes she made during the pandemic to eat in her garden in Selling. And then to her collection of poetry Defragmentation, finished in February 2020 – a time we now remember as a slipping towards lockdown and a mass unsettling of who we are and what we strive for.
I go inside to make more coffee and hunt out my copy of Defragmentation. For the next hour, I disappear into Rosemary’s poetic response to the cancer she knew was killing her. It’s an extraordinary collection of work and for a moment, despite the sunshine and the blue sky, I am filled with rage: against the tutor who told her she couldn’t write poetry; against a society that makes it difficult for artists to make art; against patriarchy, prejudice and the class ceiling; against a disease that stopped a voice that was so unique and yet, having been suppressed for so long, had finally found a platform.
And then I feel grateful to be here: to be enjoying the flowers, that bee, the sun. I feel grateful that Rosemary’s poems are in my hand: that she had recognition within her lifetime from poetry prizes, from Wordsmithery and from the creative community in Medway and Kent who were thrilled this Glasgow woman had chosen to grace us with her talent. And then there is Richard – her husband – who faithfully reads her poems at events, organises art exhibitions and established this prize in her memory.
And what an honour it is to be the judge this year. I’ve often felt that Rosemary was reading the poems with me (though she may laugh that off as a ridiculous idea – the spirit of poet like a parrot on my shoulder.)
Rosemary’s work is honest and brutal yet so often heart achingly beautiful. It takes on the complicated, imperfect nature of being human in a complicated, imperfect world. This honesty – a lack of artifice – was something I responded to in many of the poems.
Congratulations to everyone who made the longlist, and good luck!
The Longlist for the Rosemary McLeish Poetry Prize 2024
'These Bodies' by Sarah Leavesley
'What do I know of fire' by Jessica Rose Taggart
'Invictus Sold' by Jon Terranova
'Daisy chains and chips' by Pat Edwards
'Deluge' by Derek Sellen
'Children of the thaw' by Mary Anne Smith Sellen
'What a marvelous night for a rain dance' by Angela Howarth Martinots
'Wantsum' by Barnaby Harsent
'Elementals' by Steve May
'Hand-me-down' by Finola Scott
'The end is nigh' by Anna Gash
'The day the bees left' by Lizzy Perkins
'Please Accept My Condolences' by Rachael Clyne
'Marine Snow' by Connor Sansby
'Golden Shovel for Louis McNeice’s Snow' by Sarah Bowman
The final shortlist and winners will be announced at Medway River Lit in November, where the prizes will be awarded.
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