I just wanted to thank you so much for the pleasure and privilege of working on the Escalator programme this year - my poets were wonderful, and a joy to work with.”
Mimi Khalvati, September 2011
Escalator Literature has been running in the East of England for six years and has supported a wide range of writers. The competition offers the writers personal mentoring from professional writers, help with an application for a Grant for the Arts and opportunities to hone their skills and extend their contacts.
We were pleased to open up the 2010/11 competition nationwide for the first time.
Judged by Sean O’Brien, Tom Chivers and Mimi Khavati, the six winners have enjoyed individual mentoring by poets Mimi Khalvati, Daljit Nagra and George Szirtes. Winners whave also taken part in a residential weekend at the University of East Anglia and we are about to publish a promotional pamphlet of their work.
Interested in how the writers got on? Watch a short film about the writers' experiences:
The 2010/11 Escalator Literature winners were:
Geraldine Clarkson
Geraldine Clarkson started writing poetry three years ago. She was mentored by Jo Shapcott under the Jerwood/Arvon Mentoring Scheme during 2010, and shortlisted for the 2010 Arvon Poetry Competition. She has had poems published in
Smiths Knoll,
the Daily Mirror,
Twin art & fashion magazine,
Poetry Digest [on cupcakes!], online at
Eyewear, and forthcoming in
Fuselit. Two of her prose poems are included in
This Line is not for Turning: Anthology of Contemporary British Poetry, forthcoming from Cinnamon Press in autumn 2011.
Maitreyabandhu
Maitreyabandhu won the Keats-Shelley Prize, The Basil Bunting Award, the Geoffrey Dearmer Prize, and 1st prize in the New Writer Prose and Poetry competition in 2009. He won the Ledbury Poetry Festival Competition in 2010. His article on poetry as a spiritual practice is due out in the spring edition of
Poetry Review. He lives and works in the London Buddhist Centre and has been ordained into the Triratna Buddhist Order for 20 years. He has written two books on Buddhism.
Frank Newsum
Frank Newsum is from London, and has lived in Lincolnshire, Yorkshire and Germany. He began writing seriously in 2004, and since then writing has gradually encroached on most of his time, largely replacing fell-walking, leisure cycling and dinghy-sailing. He has a soft spot for mathematics, and another for Early Music. He is also interested in literature from other languages.
Eileen Pun
Eileen Pun was born in New York, US and moved to northwest England after her study as a foreign exchange student at Lancaster University. Eileen won the Manchester Metropolitan and Royal Northern College of Music, 2009 Rosamond Prize for best collaborative piece of poetry and music. She was commissioned to write a short chamber opera,
The Red Knot which was performed in May 2010. Several of her poems have appeared in magazines and anthologies in both the US and UK. Her work is most recently featured in
The Rialto’s November 2010, young poet’s feature.
Sarah Roby
Sarah Roby won the Mslexia Poetry Competition in 2009 for her poem
The Inland Waterways. Her work features in this year's
Templar Anthology and has been admired by Carol Ann Duffy for its
'willingness to experiment and to play.' She has recently completed a verse narrative on the working holidays taken in Happisburgh, North Norfolk, by Barbara Hepworth, Henry Moore and Ben Nicholson. Sarah developed a crush on this form having read Adam Foulds’ verse narrative
The Broken Word. This interest then became the focus for an MA in Creative Writing (Lancaster University) for which she was awarded Distinction. Sarah lives in Norwich.
Tom Warner
Tom Warner was born in Mansfield. In 2001 he won an Eric Gregory Award and graduated from the University of East Anglia’s MA in Creative Writing with Distinction. He received a Faber New Poets Award in 2010 and in 2009-2010 was Poet-in-residence to Newark-on-Trent. A pamphlet of his poetry was published by Faber in 2010. He currently lives in Norwich.
Three poets were commended:
Helen Mort
Edward Mackay
Rachel Rooney
We would to like to thank all of this year’s entrants.
Find out how
the 2009 winners got on, and read extracts of their work.
We run Escalator Literature on behalf of Arts Council England and we’d like to thank them for their support.
Further Information on the eligibility criteria for Grants for the Arts awards can be found on the Arts Council England website.
