Head judge, Professor Caleshu, had this to say about the winning poem:

“There’s a quiet confidence in this poem, born out of ‘wisdom and rhythm’. We join the speaker on horseback, travelling toward the poem we want to read, and so the poem we want to write. The couplets move us forward with controlled momentum, a strong trot made from a straight-forward language. And yet the poem, with each turn of phrase, surprises us, turns into those spaces which are genuine, and by which we find ‘trust’: trust in the poem to make the right steps, ‘trust’ that it will carry us into a new world order — of ‘hope’, and, at the poem’s unexpected conclusion, of numbers. This poem adds to that great tradition of poetry about poetry, a quest narrative which is both of this earth and its animals and of the ‘blue air’, where the imagination triumphs.”

Claire is from Reading, Berkshire. Her poetry collection, Eleven Rooms is published by Two Rivers Press and a further collection is forthcoming in 2016. Her novels, The Moment and The Perfect Affair and her short story Falling for Gatsby are published by Quercus. She has an MA in Creative Writing from Royal Holloway, University of London and teaches creative writing for Bracknell & Wokingham College. She also runs Fresh Eyes, an editorial and critiquing service. Her website is www.clairedyer.com

Russell is an Edinburgh-based writer and editor. He has published three short poetry collections and one full collection (The Green Dress Whose Girl is Sleeping, with Freight Books). He is the deputy editor of Shoreline of Infinity, Scotland’s only contemporary sci-fi magazine, and is the editor of Where Rockets Burn Through: Contemporary Science Fiction Poems from the UK. He has a PhD in creative writing from The University of Edinburgh, and blogs at www.poetrusselljones.blogspot.co.uk.

Nell Farrell grew up in Eastwood, Nottinghamshire, birthplace of D. H. Lawrence and now lives in Sheffield. She works as Community Participation Officer at Abbeydale Industrial Hamlet and as a creative writing tutor. Her first pamphlet, The Wrong Evangeline, was published by Panshine Press in 2003 and she is one of the authors of Some Girls’ Mothers (Route 2009), a collection of six creative non-fiction pieces about mothers and daughters which was accompanied by a national reading tour. Her second pamphlet A Drink With Camus After the Match was published by Smith/Doorstop in 2011. Her poems have appeared in several anthologies including The Sheffield Anthology (Smith/Doorstop 2012), Versions of the North (Five Leaves Press 2013) and CAST: The Poetry Business Book of New Contemporary Poets (Smith/Doorstop 2014). Her third pamphlet Mermaids and Other Devices was published in March 2015 by Moormaid Press, based in Macclesfield and run by poet Ailsa Holland.