In 2015, The Poetry School and Nine Arches Press launched a nationwide scheme to find exciting new voices in poetry with Kathryn Maris and Jane Commane as selecting editors. After reading through hundreds of anonymous entries, and narrowing down the choices from longlist to shortlist, a final four poets emerged as clear choices: Geraldine Clarkson, Lucy Ingrams, Maureen Cullen and Katie Griffiths.
Primers: Volume One now collects together a taster of poems from each of the four new poets. The brilliant chemistry of their poems proves to be a heady mix and a memorable journey — from post-war correspondents to foster families, breath-taking natural landscapes to strange, unsettling dream-like narratives and so much more in between. There's plenty here to delight and dazzle, and ample evidence of a bright future ahead for contemporary poetry, as these striking and bold new voices demonstrate.
