Individual Poet Journals Competitions
Coast to Coast to Coast publishes limited-edition handmade journals through competitions, private commissions and collaborative projects
Learn more about past Coast to Coast to Coast Individual-Poet Journals:
Ben McGuire | Josephine Corcoran | Rachel Spence | Sarah Mnatzaganian | Clare Best | Stephen Keeler | Sarah Salway | Maria McManus | Isabel Bermudez | Maureen Boyle | Rebecca Gethin | John Glenday | Lydia Harris | Jane Lovell | Private Commissions
Two poets were selected as the winners of the fourth competition, held in 2021.
It was a delight to read over one thousand poems. The winners were Karen Izod’s While There is Hope and Mark Rutter’s Sky Burial. The short-listed poets were: Jill Abram, Jean Atkin, Ama Bolton, AC Clarke, Oliver Comins, Nichola Deane, Scott Elder, Helen Evans, Nicola Heaney, Kathleen James, Ilse Pedler, and Jane Robinson.
Their poems will be published between hand-stitched covers in 2022 – when we hope to be back for live events.
Four poets were selected as the winners of the fifth competition, held in 2022/23. Two poets were selected as the winners of the fourth competition held in 2021. Four poets were selected as the winners of the third competition, held in 2020.
2022/23 | Competition Winners
Ben McGuire
Luke the World: Elegies for a Brother
2022/23 | Competition Winners
Rachel Spence
Uncalendared
2022/23 | Competition Winners
Josephine Corcoran
One Deliberate Red Dress Time I Shone
2022/23 | Competition Winners
Sarah Mnatzaganian
Slow Movement
2020 | Competition Winners
Clare Best
End of Season
It’s a pleasure to create these hand-stitched limited edition poetry journals for Clare Best who was a winner of Coast to Coast to Coast’s third poetry prize, 2020.
Clare Best has published six volumes of poetry, and a prose memoir The Missing List. In 2020 she was awarded an MA (Distinction) in Opera Making at Guildhall School of Music & Drama, and took up a Fellowship there, working on libretti and other vocal projects. She lives near the Suffolk coast, in England.
2020 | Competition Winners
Stephen Keeler
Scar Tissue
Stephen Keeler was born in the north-east of England. He studied at the universities of Durham, Leeds and London. He moved to the north-west coast of Scotland in 2010 where he writes and teaches creative writing. Stephen won the first Highland Literary Salon Poetry Competition judged by John Glenday in 2013, this was followed by a Scottish Book Trust New Writing Award in 2015. His poems have been published widely. He was commissioned by StAnza to write a poem for the 2020 festival. Stephen has recently completed work on an anthology of poems about the human body and a small collection of his own poems from Sweden. His chapbook While You Were Away was published by Maquette Press in 2018.
2020 | Competition Winners
Sarah Salway
Let's Dance
Sarah Salway was a winner of Coast to Coast to Coast’s third poetry prize, 2020. Sarah is a poet, novelist and teacher. She is the author of three novels, including Something Beginning With, and two poetry collections, You Do Not Need Another Self-Help Book and Digging Up Paradise. She is a former Canterbury Laureate and runs a reading group in Kent for the Royal Literary Fund.
2020 | Competition Winners
Maria McManus
Ellipses
Maria McManus’ recent poetry includes A Dancer Dies Twice (2020), TURF (2018) and DUST (2017 with choreographer Eileen McClory, and WRETCHES, Revolutions, Rights & Wrongs (2019) with composer Keith Acheson. Her collections are, Available Light (Arlen House, 2018), We Are Bone (2013) The Cello Suites (2009) and Reading the Dog (2006) (Lagan Press). She is artistic director of the Poetry Jukebox at Quotidian – Word on the Street.
Summer 2019 | Competition Winners
Isabel Bermudez
Madonna Moon
Isabel Bermudez worked in Colombia in television, specialising in documentary, as a Producer/Director and Camerawoman (1998–2001). In Sri Lanka, she worked in educational television and as a Special Correspondent for the Island Newspaper. (1993–1995). Her poems are widely published. She was shortlisted six times for the Bridport Prize and was most recently commended in the 2018 Winchester Poetry Prize. Her collections are Extranjeros, (Flarestack Poets 2015), Small Disturbances (Rockingham Press, 2016) and Sanctuary (Rockingham Press, 2018). She lives in Orpington, Kent.
Available to buy now
£10 + post and wrap
£1.20 (UK + Northern Ireland)
email: coast2journal@gmail.com
June 2019 | Individual-Poet Journal
THE NUNWELL LETTER
MAUREEN BOYLE
A small edition of hand-stitched journals containing Maureen Boyle's long poem, The Nunwell Letter (based on the stay of Anne More (John Donne’s wife) on the Isle of Wight in 1611. The Nunwell Letter came out of Maureen's award of the inaugural Ireland Chair of Poetry Travel Bursary.
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Maureen Boyle’s debut poetry collection, The Work of a Winter is published by Arlen House Press in 2018. She has an MA in Creative Writing from Queen’s University Belfast. She won the Ireland Chair of Poetry Prize; the Strokestown International Poetry Competition; the Fish Short Memoir Prize and the inaugural Ireland Chair of Poetry Travel Bursary to research the poem The Nunwell Letter on John Donne’s wife, Anne More’s, stay on the Isle of Wight in 1611. She taught Creative Writing with the Open University for ten years and teaches English in St Dominic’s Grammar School, Belfast.
Available to buy now
£10 + post and wrap
£1.20 (UK + Northern Ireland)
email: coast2journal@gmail.com
February 2019 | Competition Winner
Messeges
Rebecca Gethin
Poems that celebrate and mourn, in Messages, Rebecca Gethin writes about birds that are threatened by extinction. Conceived as a remembrance gift for her grandchildren, the poems are both a souvenir of what is lost for future-generations, and a warning for today. Features vibrant, insightful poems on birds including nightjars, the gold crest and linnets.
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Rebecca Gethin lives in Devon. In 2017, two pamphlets of her work were published: A Sprig of Rowan (Three Drops Press) and All the Time in the World (Cinnamon Press). Cinnamon press also previously published a collection and two novels. Her poems have appeared in UK magazines and anthologies. She recently read her work at Poetry in Aldeburgh, Buzzwords and Ways with Words. She has been a Hawthornden Fellow and undertook a residency at Brisons Veor. Rebecca’s next pamphlet, Vanishings, will be published by Palewell Press in 2019.
Edition of 49
Available to buy now
£10 + post and wrap
£1.20 (UK + Northern Ireland)
email: coast2journal@gmail.com
Special Collaborative Project
Mira
John Glenday
A journal and exhibition pieces for a project with acclaimed poet John Glenday, linked to the work of artist Mira Schendel
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John Glenday lives and works in Scotland. He has published four collections: The Apple Ghost (1989); Undark(1995); Grain (Picador, 2009) – Grain was shortlisted for both the Ted Hughes Award and the Griffin International Poetry Prize; and The Golden Mean (Picador 2015) won the 2015 Roehampton Poetry Prize.
Launch and exhibition forthcoming Spring 2020
Summer 2019 | Competition Winners
Painting the Stones Back
Lydia Harris
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Lydia Harris has made her home in the Orkney island of Westray. In 2017 she held a Scottish Book Trust New Writer Award for poetry. The Westray Writers meet regularly in her home and the Westray Poetry Library is housed there on a shelf in her porch.
Available to buy now
£10 + post and wrap
£1.20 (UK + Northern Ireland)
email: coast2journal@gmail.com
February 2019 | Competition Winner
Forbidden
Jane Lovell
On the surface, these are tightly eddying works of ekphrasis. Yet, this is not merely poetry of looking – instead they cloak memory and lived experience with the absorbed attentiveness of painting. These are poems composed in charged and extended moments: as paint is applied meditatively to canvas, as drinks are poured, between glances.
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Jane Lovell has been widely published in journals and anthologies. She won the Flambard Prize in 2015 and has been shortlisted for several awards including the Basil Bunting Prize, the Robert Graves Prize and the Periplum Book Award. Two pamphlets have been published in 2018, by Night River Wood and Against the Grain Poetry Press. Jane is the Poetry Society Stanza rep for Mid Kent. Last year Jane won the Wealden Literary Festival Writing Prize, the Terrain.org Poetry Contest and the Wigtown Poetry Prize. She recently won the Mslexia Pamphlet prize.
Edition of 49
Available to buy now
£10 + post and wrap
£1.20 (UK + Northern Ireland)
email: coast2journal@gmail.com
Commissions and Special Projects
