We start the new week here on My Poetic Side with a look at the poet nominated for a BRIT Award. We also have articles about the Douglas Anderson Writers Festival and finally 2018 Lee Bennett Hopkins Poetry Award
The Brit Awards 2018
The BRIT Awards, the British Phonographic Industry’s annual pop music awards have been around for quite a while now, with the first awards given n 1977 although they did not become an annual event in until 1982.
You might be wondering what the BRIT’s has to do with poetry? One of this year’s nominations for the Best British Female Solo Artist was Kate Tempest the spoken word poet. Her fellow nominees for the award were Dua Lipa, Jessie Ware, Laura Marling and Paloma Faith. Sadly, she didn’t win, the award was given to Dua Lipa for her debut album.
Tempest is one of the highest selling poets in the UK, she has been nominated for a number of awards since her career began and has won several including the Ted Hughes Award in 2013.
This isn’t the first time that a poet has been shortlisted for a BRIT Award in 2015 George Mpanga, also known as George the Poet, as nominated for the Critics’ Choice award.
Tracey K. Smith to Take Part in Douglas Anderson Writers Festival
The new Poet Laureate of the United States, Tracey K. Smith has confirmed that she will be taking part in this years Douglas Anderson Writers Festival. The festival which will take place at the Douglas Anderson School of the Arts in Jacksonville, Florida falls on the 3rd March this year.
Smith has held the position of Poet Laureate since September and has chosen to use her time in the role to visit the types of rural locations that simply do not get the exposure to literary conferences that other larger locations do. In the case of this festival she has been invited to be one of the big attractions together with the winner of the 2017 Man Booker Prize, George Saunders.
In 2011 Smith won a Pulitzer Prize for “Life on Mars” her third book, when she won the award she said that it wasn’t until she read a poem by Emily Dickinson in the fifth grade that she developed an interest in poetry.
In taking up the position of Poet Laureate Smith follows in the footsteps of such eminent poets as William Carlos William, Robert Frost and more recently Robert Penn Warren.
2018 Lee Bennett Hopkins Poetry Award Winner Announced
The winner of the Lee Bennet Hopkins Poetry Prize has been announced as Nikki Grimes. The award is given each year to an American anthologist or poet, in respect of a new book of children”s poetry that was published in the last year. The winning work is “One Last Word: Wisdom from the Harlem Renaissance”
Grimes’s book takes a look of the poets of the Harlem Renaissance and using their poems she has combined then with her own to create a collection that is truly thought provoking.
The award will be given during a ceremony which will take place on 12th July.
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