by Kate Birch | Apr 26, 2025 | News, Picks of the Month
‘Succinct, raw, moving.’ Voters loved the language of the poem, its spirituality and the risks it took. They were impressed by the imagery, its rhythm, its line changes. But mainly they loved how it connected them to their mothers, to their parents, to...
by Kate Birch | Mar 26, 2025 | News, Picks of the Month
Richly written human experience ‘Intuitive’, ‘creative’, ‘brilliant’, ‘relatable’, ‘beautiful’, ‘thought-provoking’ and with quite possibly the longest title that IS&T has ever published,...
by Kate Birch | Feb 21, 2025 | News, Picks of the Month
Stripped of sentimentality, raw and beautiful. Authentic, deceptively simple and relatable This shortlist was all about lives – lives born, lives saved, lives lived, lives lost – and it is perhaps fitting that the poem that came first with voters was that which looked...
by Kate Birch | Jan 20, 2025 | News, Picks of the Month
Evocative portrait of a mining town. Killer last line It was one of the closest contests that we have had in some months, that in the end saw ‘A Town of Shadows’ emerge as the Pick of the Month for December 2024. Voters found it evocative, emotive, gritty...
by Kate Birch | Dec 8, 2024 | News, Picks of the Month
The random uneasy moments resolve into the bluntness of grief. Honest and real. The vote this time was oh so close, perhaps the closest it has been for some years. But in the end it was the beautiful, moving simplicity of Stephen Keeler’s ‘Something about...
by Kate Birch | Nov 17, 2024 | News, Picks of the Month
Her work beautifully expresses an unimaginable challenge. This poem inspired voters and it moved them. But many also noted how beautiful it was, how powerful and visceral and how it was able to give a sense of not only the emotional upheaval the poet experiences but...
