John Tripp Award for Spoken Poetry
The 2007 John Tripp Award for Spoken Poetry Winners
Click on the links below to read the winning poems
1st Prize Winner – PETER READ
Peter Read who now lives in Swansea was born in Rhosllanerchrugug, near Wrexham and educated at the University of Wales Bangor. Peter is a playwright, poet, writer, performance poet and also a Creative Writing tutor. He has had five plays staged professionally, including Toshack or Me! which played to sell out audiences at the Swansea Grand Theatre in 2006 and 2007. The commissioned sequel, To Hull And Back, premieres in February 2008. Peter has performed his poetry live at numerous events in Wales, England, Ireland and America. He has also read his poetry on BBC Radio, BBC TV and ITV and has written for BBC Radio Wales and Radio 4. He runs creative writing courses and workshops and has worked in over thirty schools, helping children to write creatively. In 2007, he founded the Young Writers Squad for talented secondary school writers, and supports the Dylan Thomas Prize for Young Writers.
Peter’s Poems
Dirt
Sex Education
The Greatest Poem
Runner-up - MARTIN DAWS
Martin Daws is a performance poet who truly embraces the sounds of the words as a complex music of meaning. He uses spoken word to try and connect with the world on a deeper level and says he has developed a style of poetry that is essentially a music of speaking. Since 1999 Martin has worked as a professional workshop facilitator in music and writing, he now lives in Gwynedd. It has been said of Martin that he uses ‘intense rhythmic patterns and compacted rhyme sequences, drawn from hip hop and jazz influences, counter pointed to fluid lyrical passages of poetry written in more literate forms’. Martin has collaborated with many artists, including; electro-acoustician Rob Mackay, hip hop producers skeematic and g-frequency, dancer Sarah Mumford, and the musicians in Martin Daws Quintet.
Martin’s Poems
Yo Red
Shadows
Audience Prize Winner – MAB JONES
Mab Jones began her career when she haphazardly gate-crashed a poetry open mic and then, a month or so later, found herself in the semi-final of the Radio 4 National Poetry Slam. Thanks to this, Mab was encouraged to carry on gate-crashing events. She is now resident poet at the Resurrected comedy club in Cardiff, and has performed in recent months at Chapter, Bath Spa University, Swansea Grand Theatre, and many other places. Mab has been described as ’Pam Ayres on methadone’ and is training to become a therapeutic counsellor. Performance poetry is her own form of self-therapy, which she may outgrow at some point. Until then, Mab is having a jolly time, and tries to entertain through poems that are funny and dark in equal measure.
Mab’s Poems
Cardifference
Flagging
Welsh Wool