Poetry Anthologies

frontcover_wpc_300‘The First Five Years’ is a celebration of the best poetry submitted to the annual Welsh Poetry Competition in its opening years.

A distinct yet varied expression of the world we inhabit. Experimental, vibrant, musical, shocking, unapologetic. This anthology is as much for the unseen writers as it is for the commemorated. All art is opinion and all rules are meant to be broken. So if we have pushed a little further back the conventional and the humdrum, if we have shook up the establishment a little and injected life back into one of the greatest art forms available to mankind then we stand guilty as charged. That was indeed our intention.

This collection of over 100 poems contains some fearsome poetry. Of that there is no doubt. And the reason, I would venture, is that the poets contained herein were not afraid to say what they wanted for fear of failure or ridicule by those out of touch with true avant-garde literature. And so, this anthology, like the competition, is for the real artists, both within Wales and beyond. – Dave Lewis

A big thanks to all poets who’ve entered, won a prize and given permission for their work to be published by us. A huge thanks also to our three great judges – John Evans, Mike Jenkins and Sally Spedding without whom none of this would be possible. And to everyone else please pass on news of our competition to as many people as you can. The more people who know about us the bigger and better we can become.

To buy a copy click here.


Sample poems:

To read some of the winning entries from the first five years of the competition please visit the Welsh Poetry Competition website and click on the Winners links.