Poetry Archive Now Wordview 2023: Important Information Enclosed

We’re ready to help get your bills down.
We’re ready to break down your door
And gift you a pre-payment meter
To stop you from shivering more.

Perhaps you did not learn to budget,
But we can assist you with that.
And can we suggest, in the meantime,
You stay in one room in your flat?

We see you’ve restarted your asthma.
There’s not enough gas for a bath.
You cough when you go to the bathroom.
A more parsimonious path

Could help you to quash all these problems.
And follow our energy plan.
We do understand, and we promise
To help you as much as we can.

Perhaps you could turn down your boiler.
Is your jacket too thin? Buy a spare.
The weather created this crisis.
We want you to know that we care.

Poetry Archive Now Wordview 2023 Winners

Poetry Archive Now! was established in 2020 to enable us to gather recordings from a much wider pool of talented poets from the UK and ...

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Nuala Watt

Nuala Watt is a Scottish disabled poet. Her first collection, The Department of Work and Pensions Assesses a Jade Fish, is due from Blue Diode in 2024.

A special thank you to our WordView 2023 poets.

Here's what our PAN Wordview 2023 judges have to say about this year's competition. Robert Seatter, says "ever a joy and a privilege to co-judge the Poetry Archive Now annual competition, tapping into a pulse of thought and feeling from around the globe, condensed into intensely crafted poems. The entries came from all continents, covered myriad themes, spoke in different voices, but all shared a fundamental belief in the power of poetry to speak from the soul."

Courtney Conrad says "the poets who participated in this competition reminded us that poetry is a tool for change, a medium for reflection, and a source of inspiration. These poets have left an indelible mark on me and the world, and I can't wait to see how their words continue to shape our collective consciousness in the future."

Merrie Joy Williams says "The Poetry Archive is such an indispensable resource - the idea that a poem read in a poet’s own voice can outlast those seemingly endless moments tinkering until a poem feels right, or at least robust enough to convey a memory or insight - so exploring these entries was a privilege and joy. Selecting a final twenty was tortuous. So many captured the spirit of these times, when so many things are at risk of erosion or at a critical juncture: the environment, the misuse of AI, truthfulness, the modus operandi of those who run our countries, and issues of social justice and humanity. Others captured personal moments of reckoning in bold and intimate and surprising ways. Somehow we’ve managed to narrow them down and here we have, I think, a wide range of voices and approaches, personal and political, national and international, witty and wise, often proving that these dialectic notions are one and the same."

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