2018
Mary Jean Chan
Judge: Paul Farley
2017
Raymond Antrobus
Judge: Ocean Vuong
2016
Wayne Holloway-Smith
Judge: Jane Yeh
2015
Laura Scott
Judge: Selima Hill
2014
Zaffar Kunial
Judge: Bill Manhire
2013
Mir Mahfuz Ali
Judge: John Glenday
2012
Kayo Chingonyi
Judge: Jane Draycott
2011
Denise Saul
Judge: Moniza Alvi
2010
Kim Moore
Judge: Fred D’Aguiar
Other poems commended by the judge include: ‘To My Adulterous Husband’ by Nadia Al Fazil-Kareem; ‘In The Steam Room’ by Liz Berry; ‘Jonah’s Prayer’ by Aviva Dautch; ‘Wittgenstein’s Football Tactics’ by Tim Hopkins; ‘The Problem of Identity’ by Dominic McLoughlin; ‘Phineas Survives’ by James Midgley; ‘The Wolf’ also by Kim Moore; ‘Threadneedle Street’ by Scott Kristoffer Ripley; and ‘Starlings’ by Sam Willetts.
2009
Maitreyabandhu
Judge: Glyn Maxwell
Also commended: Jeri Onitskansky for ‘The Distinct’ and Fani Papageorgiou for ‘Caramel’
2008
Kearan Williams
Judge: Peter Porter
2007
Neetha Kunaratnam
Judge: Alan Brownjohn
2006
Tamara Fulcher
Judge: David Harsent
2005
Andrew Bailey
Judge: Elaine Feinstein
Commended: Valeria Melchioretto
2004
Lucie McKee
Judge: Andrew McNeillie
Commended: Daljit Nagra’s ‘Look We Have Coming to Dover’
2003
Rebecca O’Connor
Judge: Matthew Welton
Commended: Jon Woodward’s ‘your eyes are just hanging’ and Carrie Etter’s ‘Fin de Siècle’.
2002
David Gravender
Judge: Stephen Knight
Commended: “Simon Carnell has been around for a while. His ‘Red Earth Dreaming’ is a characteristically curious aggregation. It’s good to hear he has a book forthcoming. I was also taken by the odd angles of Anthony Caleshu’s three poems: ‘I had to be rescued by a pretty lifeguard who later told me / about the prescription protection her dermatologist prescribed’. Veronica Gaylie’s ‘Prayers’ is a gem. Who’d have thought a poem that ropes in the Rolling Stones’s drummer could be not only amusing but affecting. Evan Rail’s ‘And Counting’ announces, with bracing confidence, ‘No one can stop me today, not tonight’. His poem’s sweeping assertions and abnormal confidence certainly made me feel old.
2001
Michael Murphy
Judge: Mimi Khalvati
Commended: Kate Rhodes, Kathryn Gray, Khan Singh Kumar, Sean Elliott, Neil Ferguson and Caroline Bird.
2000
Anna Wrigley
Judge: Maura Dooley
Commended: John Stammers, Ivy Garlitz, Martha Kapos, Greta Stoddart, Jonathan Trietel
1999
Sarah Wardle
Judge: Sheenagh Pugh
Commended: Angela Leighton, Ros Barber, Hugh Macpherson, V. G. Lee, R. G. Binns, Cate Parish
1998
Paul Farley
Judge: Wendy Cope