oh god it’s wonderful to get out of bed & drink too much wine & think too much & love you so much

Some exciting news via The Poetry Society! I’m honoured to have had a poem from my work-in-progress, about overthinking and solo-drinking in Cornwall, chosen as one of the three winners of the Free Verse Prize 2024.

The winners of the Free Verse Prize 2024 have now been announced, selected by the competition judge Chrissy Williams. The Free Verse Prize is run alongside the Free Verse Fair held today at St Columba’s in Kensington, London.

The overall winner of the competition is Wes Lee, for her poem ‘Possession’. They win £500 and their poem will be published in the Summer 2024 edition of Poetry News as well as in the Free Verse programme issued to all attendees of the Fair.  Wes Lee lives in New Zealand and has three poetry collections, including Shooting Gallery (2016), Body, Remember (2017) and By The Lapels (2019).

The two highly commended poets were HLR for her poem ‘oh god it’s wonderful to get out of bed & drink too much wine & think too much & love you so much’ and Vanessa Lampert for her poem ‘Anxiety Scale for People Not Favourably Inclined Towards Babies’.

With thanks to the ever-lovely Chrissy for her encouragement, and all at The Poetry Society for organising the Free Verse Fair (which was so much fun!) and for publishing my poem. Big congratulations to Wes Lee (whose poem I am OBSESSED with) and to my brilliant friend Nessa Lampert whose poem made me both laugh and grimace.

Thanks also to the poets who inspired this one: Frank O’Hara who I stole the title from, Keats and his letters on negative capability, Graves’ 1969 Paris Review interview, Kim Addonizio who told me to decide what my ‘pain body’ looks like, and, last but not least, Charlie Baylis who let me exploit our relationship for poetic purposes…

I grafted so bloody hard on this poem, so please enjoy it! xx