This week on My Poetic Side we look at the fight to save a park with links to a poet and the longlist for the Jhalak Prize.
Villagers Fight to Save Park Loved by Poet
A group of villagers in Wiltshire have been campaigning in an attempt to save a park that was one the joy of one of the most celebrated war poets in Britain.
Heytesbury Recreation Ground Trust (HRGT) are a charity group made up of residents from the village and they are fighting to save a piece of land that has been used as a cricket ground, a football field and has been an important part of village life for generations.
Its most important claim to fame however is that it was once a favourite place of Siegfried Sassoon the celebrated war poet. Sassoon lived in the village of Heytesbury from 1933 until he died in 1967. He loved the cricket club that used the land.
The piece of land has recently been placed on the market and given a guide price of £315,000. The group and a number of villagers are campaigning to raise the money so that they can buy the land and protect the legacy of the poet. They have already been pledged two amounts of £10,000 as well as a number of smaller amounts, it would appear that there are clearly a lot of others in the village who are proud of their literary connections.
They are concerned about the amount of money that they have to raise and the fact that the plot of land could be sold at any time, another plot of land put on the market at a similar time in the village has already been sold.
If they do manage to raise the money and purchase the land. They are not actually sure what they will do with it, their immediate plan is simply to stop the purchase of the land for potential development.
Longlist Announced for 2025 Jhalak Prize
The longlist for this year’s Jhalak Prize has been announced and for the first time it includes a new poetry award. The prize is in its ninth year and celebrates books written by writers of colour who have had their work published in Ireland or the UK.
The new prize honours poetry, meaning that there are now three dedicated awards. The prize founder Sunny Singh said that this year the standard of the entries had been particularly high.
The judging panel for this year’s prize have had a particularlydifficult task reducing the list of entrants in the competition down to a longlist just 12 books for each prize. The longlist for the poetry prize is in their opinion, particularly important because it is estimated that at the moment less than 1% of GCSE students get the opportunity to study a book written by a writer of colour.
The shortlist for the prize is due to be announced on 22nd April. They will then have to wait until 4th June to see who the winners will be for each category.
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