Next Generation Poets

A Lancaster University lecturer in Creative Writing is amongst The Arts Council and the Poetry Book Society’s top 20 best poets.

In the Next Generation Poets project, Paul Farley, whose collection of poetry called The Ice Age ( Picador) won the Whitbread Book Award for the best poetry collection of 2002, has been listed amongst writers widely acknowledged to be the most important voices of their generation. The Ice Age was a Poetry Book Society Choice for the summer of 2002, and was short-listed for the T.S. Eliot Prize.

Meanwhile Jacob Polley, a Lancaster University creative writing graduate, has also been included on the list for his collection The Brink (Picador).

The full list is as follows:

Patience Agbabi, Transformatrix (Canongate); Amanda Dalton, How to Disappear (Bloodaxe); Nick Drake, The Man in the White Suit (Bloodaxe); Jane Draycott, Prince Rupert's Drop (Carcanet / OUP); Paul Farley, The Ice Age (Picador); Leontia Flynn, These Days (Cape); Matthew Francis, Dragons (Faber); Sophie Hannah, First of the Last Chances (Carcanet); Tobias Hill, Midnight in the City of Clocks (Carcanet / OUP); Gwyneth Lewis, Keeping Mum (Bloodaxe); Alice Oswald, Dart (Faber); Pascale Petit, The Zoo Father (Seren); Jacob Polley, The Brink (Picador); Deryn Rees Jones, The Memory Tray (Seren); Maurice Riordan, Floods (Faber); Robin Robertston, A Painted Field (Picador); Owen Sheers, The Blue Book (Seren); Henry Shukman, In Dr No's Garden (Cape); Catherine Smith, The Butcher's Hands (Smith Doorstop); Jean Sprackland, Hard Water (Cape)

The judging panel for the Next Generation Poets was chaired by Poet Laureate Andrew Motion, and the panel comprised Simon Armitage, Bernadine Evaristo, Colin Greenwood, A L Kennedy, James Naughtie and Marie Robertson (Poetry Book Society Member).

Paul Farley was born in Liverpool and studied at the Chelsea School of Art. His first collection, The Boy from the Chemist is Here to See You (Picador, 1998), won a Forward Prize and the Somerset Maugham Award; it was also shortlisted for the Whitbread Poetry Prize. The following year he was named Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year. From 2000-2002 he was writer-in-residence at The Wordsworth Trust in Grasmere.

Graduates from the department of English and Creative Writing have gone on to win prizes and publication by leading publishers and magazines. Recent and widely acclaimed novels by our graduates include:

Ingenious Pain, Andrew Miller (Sceptre, 1997). Winner of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and the Impac Prize.

The Changeling, Alison MacLeod (Macmillan, 1996)

Does It Show?, Paul Magrs (Chatto, 1996)

House of Rooms, Siri Reynolds (Polygon, 1997)

The Drink and Dream Teahouse, Justin Hill (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2000)

Sun Dog, Monique Roffey (Scribner, 2003)

Hound, George Green (Transworld, 2003)