Congratulations to Carrie Etter who has won the London Festival Fringe Prize for the Best First Collection of Poetry 2010. At a packed prize-giving in the West End Carrie’s book, The Tethers, beat off strong competition to carry off the glory and a prize of £2500. Judges Daljit Nagra, Tamar Yoseleff and Adam O’Rioran were full of praise for language, conceits and formal qualities of Carrie’s poetry. She will now appear at the Festival Awards ceremony on 26 August at the Waldorf Hilton, and will read with the judges at a special event at Coffee-House Poetry at the Troubadour on 1 November.
Carrie Etter said “My thanks to all the judges and to my fellow shortlsted poets, the quality of whose work made the prize that much more dear”. The judges comments were as follows:
It’s rare to find a poet having quite so much fun with language and life as Carrie Etter. The poems perform acrobatics with forms as they are driven by the possibilities of words so each piece seems to arrive at its own unexpected and surprised ending. What’s most impressive is Etter’s restless mind that fetches odd allusions or steers off into tangents in a way that always compels us to make the journey. It’s also rare to find a poet who can persistently find joy through suffering with such an assured lightness of touch which defies its lucid surface. A persistently witty and beautifully moving book that is carefully themed and linguistically patterned so that it feels more like the collection of an experienced poet.
Judges’ Report, London New Poetry Award 2010
Commiserations are in order at the two other Seren poets shortlisted. Carolyn Jess-Cooke for Inroads, and Forward-shortlisted Hilary Menos for Berg.

Read an interview with Costa Prize winning poet John Haynes on the Cyprus Well website www.cypruswell.com
His new book-length poem, You, is available now from Seren.

This weekend you can get not one taster but two of Carol Rumens’ new collection De Chirico’s Threads. On Saturday 14th the Guardian will include ‘De Chirico Paints Ariadne on Naxos’ as its poem of the week. The FT doesn’t agree with that choice, however, it will print ‘Hurbinek’s Children’ as its poem of the week. Whichever you choose they’re both terrific poems from a terrific new collection by one of the outstanding poets in the UK. 
 
And tune into ‘Words and Music’ on Radio 3 on the 15th, when you can hear ‘Beaujolais’ from Kate Bingham’s debut collection Cohabitation read as part of the France-themed programme.  Bingham is currently shortlisted in the Best Poem section of this year’s Forward Prize.