Local poetry duo triumph at competition

Two local poets – Rosie Jackson from Frome and Dawn Gorman from Beckington – are celebrating winning first prize in a poetry competition with their collaborative pamphlet ‘Aloneness is a Many-Headed Bird’. 

For winning the ‘Conversationally Speaking’ competition, their collection of 20 poems will be published later in the year by Hedgehog Press, run by Mark Davidson in Bristol, 

Rosie said, ‘This was a huge challenge, as the poems had to be written directly in response to each other and yet also work in their own right. We wanted to write about bodies, love and ageing, but it became even bigger than that. We had a few false starts and almost gave up several times, yet somehow in the end it came together and we’re very proud of the result and utterly delighted to win such a prestigious prize.”

The judges, Nigel Kent and Sarah Thomson, said in their report, “We were in awe of the stamina, effort and vigour which informed the submissions. We looked for a collection that demonstrated evenness in quality, each poem needing to demonstrate originality, inventiveness and accomplishment in both style and form. In addition, the collection needed to have a coherent call-response structure: we looked at how each poem related to the poems that preceded and followed it. The winner, Dawn Gorman and Rosie Jackson’s ‘Aloneness is a Many-Headed Bird’ impressed us because it not only fulfilled all these criteria but it also immediately drew the reader into the conversation between the two poets on both an intellectual and an emotional level and sustained attention from start to finish. It was a very impressive piece of work!”

Rosie Jackson is well known in Frome for her poetry and writing workshops. Two years ago she won 1st prize in the Stanley Spencer Poetry competition and last year won at Wells and in other festivals. Her next collection, ‘Two Girls and a Beehive’, poems about Stanley Spencer, is another collaboration, this time with a Devon poet, Graham Burchell, and will be published by Two Rivers Press next April. For more information about Rosie, visit: www.rosiejackson.org.uk      

Dawn Gorman, also widely published, runs many community arts events, including the popular poetry series Words & Ears each month in Bradford on Avon. Her own new pamphlet, ‘Instead, Let Us Say’, will be published in September by Dempsey & Windle.

She and Rosie have been in the same peer poetry group in Frome for several years. Both of them are also involved with a big event Rosie is organising for National Poetry Day, October 3rd at Shepton Mallet Prison, 2-4 pm when 18 poets, most of them from Frome and the surrounding area, will be performing poems on themes of imprisonment and freedom. This will be part of the B-wing project at the prison during Somerset Arts week, featuring Fiona Campbell and many local artists.