E Y E W E A R, THE BLOG BY TODD SWIFT

JENNA CLAKE IS OUR WINNER THIS YEAR!

GREAT NEWS!

READ ALL ABOUT IT HERE

Mark Ford - world-renowned poet (Faber), editor (Ashbery), critic, and professor (UCL), has been reading a stellar group of poets, and will be sending his judge's report to us next week.... get ready for the announcement of the winner NEXT WEEK. Here is a list of the brilliant shortlist OF TEN BRILLIANT UK/IRISH POETS 35 YEARS OR UNDER: Niall Bourke is from Kilkenny, in Ireland, but now lives in London. He teaches English Literature at St Michael’s College in Bermondsey and in 2015 he finished an MA in creative writing and teaching at Goldsmiths University of London. He writes both poetry and prose and has been published in a number of journals and magazines in the UK and Ireland, including; The Galway Review,  Southbank Poetry, Magma, Three Drops From A Cauldron, Prole, Holdfast Magazine and Ink Sweat and Tears. In 2015 he was longlisted for The Short Story competition and has been twice shortlisted for the Over The Edge New Writer Of The YearAward (for both poetry and fiction). H…

The Melita Hume Poetry Prize
THE MELITA HUME POETRY PRIZE is an award of £1,500 and a publishing deal with Eyewear Publishing Ltd., for the best first full collection by a young poet writing in the English language, 35 YEARS OR UNDER at the time of entry. The aim of this prize is to support younger emerging writers. This is open to any one of the requisite age, of any nationality, resident in the United Kingdom and/or Ireland.  It is free to enter. Previous winners are Caleb Klaces for Bottled Air (2012); judge Tim Dooley; Marion McCready for Tree Language (2013); judge Jon Stone; Amy Blakemore for Humbert Summer (2014); judge Emily Berry.

2015 competition
The Judge for the 2015 competition is Toby Martinez de las Rivas.His poetry collection Terror was published by Faber & Faber in 2014, and he is widely considered one of the best younger poets now writing.Toby Martinez de las Rivas was born in 1978. He grew up in Somerset, then moved to the north-east of England after studying histor…

AMY BLAKEMORE WINS THE £1,400 MELITA HUME POETRY PRIZE 2014

THE COLLECTION “SPEAKS FOR A GENERATION BORED OF ITS IDOLS”

Faber award-winning poet Emily Berry (Dear Boy, 2013) – the 2014 judge for Eyewear’s Melita Hume Poetry Prize (now in its third year) – has chosen East London poet and model Amy Blakemore (pictured below) as the winner, from an international shortlist of 11. The prize – the richest of its kind – also comes with guaranteed publication and launch in spring 2015 from the indie publisher known for its stylish hardcovers and international roster of talent. Any poet living in the UK or Ireland 35 years or under at time of entering is eligible – the prize is for the best full, original and unpublished collection of poetry submitted in that year.Previous winners include Granta-listed poet Caleb Klaces and Scotland’s Marion McCready. Amy Blakemore was born in Deptford, London in 1991. She started writing poetry at the age of fifteen, “primarily out of spite” she says. She was na…

Last, but not least, we come to the 11th shortlisted poet, all read and selected from many more fine submissions, by our judge for this year, Emily Berry. We will be announcing the winner on the 7th of May. Dr Victoria Kennefick (pictured) is a native of Shanagarry, Co. Cork.She was a receipient of a Fulbright Scholarship in 2007 and completed her PhD in Literature at University College Cork in 2009. Her poems have been published in The Stinging Fly, Southword, Wordlegs, The Weary Blues and Abridged. She won the Red Line Book Festival Poetry Prize in 2013 and was shortlisted for the Bridport Poetry Prize 2013 and the Gregory O'Donoghue Poetry Prize 2014.She was selected to read as part of the Poetry Ireland Introductions Series 2013 and at the Cork Spring Poetry Festival Emerging Writers Reading in February 2014.Now living and working in Kerry, she is a member of the Listowel Writers' Week committee and co-coordinator of its New Writers' Salon, as well coordinating the recen…

Tom Weir (pictured) was born in 1980 and grew up in a small village outside Cambridge. He has a 1st class degree in Creative Arts from Bath Spa University, and a Master's degree in Creative Writing from the same university.
He won this year's Templar IOTA Shots competition and his work has appeared in various magazines, including Stand, Staple and The Frogmore Papers. He was also one of the poets featured in the 2012 anthology Lung Jazz, Young British Poets for Oxfam. His first pamphlet, The Outsider, is due out this month (May).

The Outsider
As I climb onto the gate my foot slips on the wet steel. I cling on with my arms, my body, and vault over;
the wet ground moves beneath my feet as I land.
It’s not raining but the air’s damp, moisture clings

to it like condensation to glass. There’s a sheep caught on a barbed wire fence at the edge of the field,
but by the time I get to it the knotted steel blades
have snagged its coat like fish-hooks. You’re already beside it,

trying to spo…

Theresa Muñoz (pictured) was born to Filipino parents in Vancouver, Canada and now lives in Edinburgh. She writes about immigration, relationships and the internet. Her work has appeared in several journals including Best Scottish Poems 2013, Poetry Review and Canadian Literature. She has been a prizewinner in the Troubadour International and the McClellan Poetry Awards. Her pamphlet Close was published by HappenStance Press in 2012.
She has published articles on contemporary poetics and Scottish literature. She was an Overseas Research Scholar at the University of Glasgow, where she wrote the first thesis on the work of Tom Leonard. She works as an instructor/researcher and is also the online editor for the Scottish Review of Books.

Google Page Twenty
Poor Google page twenty adrift in the internet desert
nobody comes to click on you witness your existence barely I
in my third hour of searching for ice wines in the valleys
of British Columbia you are the product of selected words
wine / w…