THE winner of the top prize at this year’s Winchester Poetry Festival has been chosen, fighting off competition from more than 2,000 entries.

Lewis Buxton from Norwich has become the fifth winner of the Winchester Poetry Prize for his poem Field Dressing a Rabbit, having been placed third in 2019.

The prize-giving ceremony this year was arranged as an online event giving all of the long-listed poets the opportunity to ‘attend’.

The competition judge poet Andrew McMillan, congratulated the authors of the winning and commended poems, highlighting that the poems had earned their place on the final long-list by ‘surprising me, by grabbing me by the scruff of my old t-shirt and not letting me go, by showing me things I didn’t realise poetry could do.’

Festival chair Stephen Boyce said: “This year has been a difficult one for many people and it was disappointing to have to postpone the Winchester Poetry Festival. So we were very pleased to be able to continue with the Poetry Prize. The popularity of the annual competition is immensely encouraging. Each year we have been able to attract a highly regarded judge for the competition, while the generous support of our sponsors enables us to give appropriate recognition to some outstanding poets.”

The prize for the best poem by a Hampshire-based poet, sponsored by Warren & Son was won by Imogen Cook, a third year student of Creative Writing and English Literature at the University of Winchester for her poem Nose Piercing.

All the winning and commended poems are published in an anthology entitled un-seaming the tendon, available via the from Winchester Poetry Festival website or from P&G Wells Bookshop.