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