A huge thanks to everyone who entered this year’s poetry prize! We had so many high quality entries this year which resulted in a huge longlist, but eventually our judges managed to whittle it down to the following three entries. All submissions were read anonymously.

Here are the winners of The London Magazine Poetry Prize for 2018!

1st prize: The Lean Years by Sharon Black

2nd place Black Fire by Matthew Smith

3rd place: Self-Addressed – Alycia Pirmohamed

As well as receiving prizes of £500, £300 and £200 respectively, each of these poems will be published in the December/January Issue of The London Magazine, as well as online.

Below is a short statement from our judges Les Robinson, Sophie Collins, and Mark Ford:

We enjoyed reading the poems and found it very hard to pick the eventual winners.
In the end we chose The Lean Years as the winner as it contained many strong images and emotions within its well constructed form.
In second place was Black Fire which we liked for its edginess and intrigue.
Finally we placed Self-Addressed in third place, a moving, reflective poem.

Congratulation to the three winners and thanks to all the other enthusiastic poets whose work we read with pleasure.

Full long list below (in no particular order):

The Lean Years — Sharon Black

Faultlines — Sharon Black

Light’s Tricks — Sharon Black

Ash Wednesday — Lois P. Jones

Everything I Know About Atlantic Gigantism and New Prosthetics I Learned at the Fish Market — Rachel Moore

women who dye — Elsa Fischer

Forward-looking — John Gallas

Winter Flounder — Greg Rappleye

Fallow — Jonathan Greenhause

Agave and Pentheus  — Michael Farren

Black Fire — Matthew Smith

The Man Who Became A Bird — Teresa Godfrey

Self-Addressed — Alycia Pirmohamed

Kenmare — Seamus Harrington

The History Section — Rob Sanders

The Parkinson Code — Michael Henry

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To enter our current Short Story Prize, go here.