The Academi Cardiff International Poetry Competition

2008 Cardiff International Poetry Competition

The Judges

Jo Shapcott

Jo Shapcott was born in London and now lives in Radnorshire. Her Book: Poems 1988–1998 (2000), consists of a selection of poetry from her three award-winning collections: Electroplating the Baby (1988), which won the Commonwealth Poetry Prize for Best First Collection, the Poetry Book Society Choice Phrase Book (1992), and My Life Asleep (1998), which won the Forward Poetry Prize (Best Collection). Tender Taxes, a collection of versions of Rainer Maria Rilke’s poems in French, was published in 2002. Together with Matthew Sweeney she edited an anthology of contemporary poetry in English, but gathered from around the world, entitled Emergency Kit: Poems for Strange Times (1996).  She teaches on the MA in Creative Writing at Royal Holloway, University of London and is Visiting Professor at the University of the Arts, London. She is Consulting Editor for Arc Publications.

U A Fanthorpe

U A Fanthorpe was born in Kent. She was educated in Surrey and at Oxford, and taught for sixteen years, before abandoning a respectable salary to take a job as a hospital clerk in Bristol. This experience pitchforked her into poetry. Her poetry collections, which span four decades, include Side Effects (1978), Voices Off (1984) and Queuing for the Sun (2003) - all published by Peterloo Poets. Her most recent collection, Homing In: Local Poems, was published in 2006 by Cyder Press. In 1994 she became the first woman to be nominated for the post of Professor of Poetry at Oxford. U A Fanthorpe is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and was made CBE in 2001 for services to poetry. In 2003 she received The Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry.

Tiffany Atkinson will continue in her role as Filter Judge