James Kirkup Memorial Poetry Competition by 2010 Winners: poetry from Red Squirrel Press

First Annual James Kirkup Memorial Poetry Competition

Winners announced

The winners of the first James Kirkup Memorial Competition

The results of the first Annual James Kirkup Memorial Poetry Competition were announced at a celebratory event at South Shields Central Library on Friday 23rd April 2010 (on what would have been James Kirkup's 92nd birthday). The winning poem was The Timewasters by Lesley Mountain (centre front in the photograph, sitting between judges Alistair Robinson and Tom Kelly). You can read The Timewasters on this web site.

Poet James Kirkup sadly died in Andorra on 11th May 2009; he was ninety-one years old. He continued to write until the end of his life. Red Squirrel Press, who published his last collection of new poems, Marsden Bay, celebrated his life by sharing memories and favourite readings from his work in South Shields Library Theatre on Saturday 13th June 2009.

At the end of the event Red Squirrel Managing Editor Sheila Wakefield launched the James Kirkup Annual Memorial Poetry Competition, created to enable his memory to live on and to enable poets, both new and accomplished, to be published. She announced that the winner's prize would be to have a pamphlet published, and the runners up would be featured in an anthology. "I do not believe in charging for competitions," she added, "so it is free to enter and will remain so."

The anthology, containing the winning poem and 23 runners up, has already been published, and can be ordered from Red Squirrel Press.

ISBN 978-1-906700-25-6
£4.00 plus 49p postage and packing.

or send a cheque for £4.49 and payable to Red Squirrel Press to
Red Squirrel Press, PO Box 219, Morpeth, Northumberland NE61 9AU,
with your name and address and saying you want a copy of James Kirkup Memorial Poetry Competition.

Red Squirrel is extremely grateful to the three judges - Terry Kelly, Tom Kelly and Alistair Robinson - for doing a difficult job with a great number of entries of a very high standard. We would also like to thank Dorothy Fleet who was friends with James Kirkup for many years and is now also his archivist, and South Shields Library, especially Keith Bardwell, Anne Sharp and Hildred Whale.

Thanks finally, to all the poets who entered the competition from all over the world and, of course, to the winner and runners up.