On Friday 8th of July six shortlisted poets who’d written five books made their way to the Queen Elizabeth Theatre on Southbank, to celebrate the CLiPPA 2022, and hear who had won. Laura Mucha, Matt Goodfellow and I were shortlisted for Being Me, Val Bloom for Stars with Flaming Tails, Manjeet Mann for The Crossing, Kate Wakeling for Cloud Soup, and Matt Goodfellow (again!) for Caterpillar Cake.
The awards were hosted by Southbank and the ALCS as well as the CLPE, and Michael Rosen, last year’s winner, was the main compère, which was fantastic – and of course the whole proceedings were drawn live by the incomparable Chris Riddell as usual.
The performances by the poets were interspersed with the winning shadowing schools’ children’s performances, and wonderful they were, too. The whole ceremony can be watched below, or if you only want to see us, we came on second at about 28 mins in!
The very deserving winner was announced as Valerie Bloom – my review of her gorgeous book is here, posted in January.
Congratulations to all the other shortlisted poets who are all wonderful, and all lovely (we had a fabulous day), and to the CLPE, who as usual put on a fantastic award ceremony, where everything went like clockwork.
And congratulations and huge thanks to our publisher, Janetta Otter-Barry, who published Stars with Flaming Tails, and also Matt’s, Laura’s and my book, Being Me, AND Matt’s Caterpillar Cake – three out of the five shortlisted titles!
Poetry Roundabout 