April 2006 - Advances

Judith Bishop wins the ABR Poetry Prize

The judges of the ABR Poetry Prize certainly earned their pastrami on rye this year! Could the short list have been closer, the final choice more difficult? Doubtful. Morag Fraser, Peter Rose and Craig Sherborne agree that a number of the six short-listed poems (which appeared in the March issue) would have made worthy winners. Such is the tyranny of competitions, they had to choose a single poem, and it took a while – longer in fact than Brendan Ryan’s marvellous road poem, ‘Back Roads, Local Roads’, took to unfold.