Winners announced -16th June 2010

The two winners of the Michael Marks Awards for Poetry Pamphlets were announced at a Readings and Award Ceremony which took place on 16th June at the British Library.

Selima Hill won the Michael Marks Poetry Award for her pamphlet Advice on Wearing Animal Prints.

HappenStance won the Michael Marks Publishers’ Award on the basis of their publishing programme in 2009.

Ali Smith , Chair of the Judges, who announced the winning poet at the award ceremony, said:

“Selima Hill's Advice on Wearing Animal Prints is a courageous work; startling, strange and unforgettable, it’s a piece of disciplined wildness which grows in power with each re-read.”

Ali Smith went on to praise HappenStance for “the elegance, thoughtfulness and clarity of their design, and the infectious interaction, open-mindedness and energy of their publishing ethos.”

Click here to read Ali's speech in full.


Lady Marks with winner Selima Hill and Phil Spence, Director of Scholarship and Collections at the British Library.

The six poets shortlisted for the Michael Marks Poetry Award: back row: Selima Hill, Richard Moorhead. Front row: Tom Chivers, Hugh McMillan, David Hart and Nii Ayikwei Parkes.


Both winners, selected from over 150 entries, were presented with a cheque for £5,000 by Lady Marks.

The judges for the 2009 Michael Marks Awards for Poetry Pamphlets are novelist Ali Smith, poet Jo Shapcott and Richard Price, poet and Head of Modern British Collections at the British Library. Click here to read more about the judges and the organisations behind the awards.

All six pamphlets on the shortlist are available to buy, as too are a selection of pamphlets from the four shortlisted publishers. Click here to buy online or call the Poetry Book Society on 020 7831 7468.

Thanks to the generous support of the Michael Marks Charitable Trust, these awards are designed to raise the profile of poetry pamphlets and also recognise and reward the enormous contribution that poets and their pamphlet publishers make to the poetry world in the United Kingdom.

Manuscripts associated with the winning poet’s pamphlet will be offered to the British Library’s historic special collections and all pamphlets will be offered to the Library’s Modern British Collections.

For more information about poetry pamphlets and to hear the shortlisted poets read from their work, please visit the British Library’s website.

Click here to read the press release.