The results are in. The Judge’s Choice and the Readers’ Choice for Best Poem 2023 have been determined.
The Milk House would like to extend its gratitude once more to poet Patrick Deeley for taking up the hard work of creating a shortlist of the poems published on the site this year, and then choosing from this excellent work one poem that he believed to be the best. If you haven’t already, do consider reading Patrick’s poetry, as it presents rural Ireland with a singular style seldom found elsewhere.
We’d also like to thank the ten shortlisted authors for trusting us with their poetry, as well as recording their readings of it. We’re very proud to have their work on The Milk House, representing our project, and we hope that they feel the same. You can listen to the shortlist here.
Finally, thank you to our readers for another great year. Your support keeps The Milk House going.
And so, without further ado, here are your 2023 Judge’s Choice and Reader’s choice winners, each of whom will receive a 50 euro/dollar gift certificate from Kennys Bookshop.
Judge’s Choice Best Poem 2023
Sydney Lea is a former Pulitzer finalist and winner of the Poets’ Prize, Sydney Lea served as founding editor of New England Review and was Vermont’s Poet Laureate from 2011 to 2015. He is the author of twenty-five books: a novel, five volumes of personal and three of critical essays, and sixteen poetry collections, most recently What Shines (Four Way Books, 2023). In 2021, he was presented with his home state of Vermont’s most prestigious artist’s distinction: the Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts. His pieces can be found here and here and here.
Patrick Deeley: This poem manages at once to be both sharply urban and intensely pastoral. It gripped me from its opening line – “He ruminated, cigar in crippled jaw” – and carried me through the many registers and ‘ruminations’ of its altering landscape until the wonderfully uncanny ‘release’ at the end – of cattle and sheep feeding “as if narcotized, their mild jaws rolling”.
Reader’s Choice Best Poem 2023
Jonathan Humble is a retired deputy head teacher living in Cumbria. His poems have appeared in a number of anthologies and other publications online and in print including Curlew Calling (Numenius Press), Diversifly (Fair Acre Press) and This Place I Know (Handstand Press). A collection of his light poetry My Camel’s Name is Brian was published in 2015 by TMB Books. A second short collection of his work Fledge was published by Maytree Press in 2020. He is editor of the Dirigible Balloon poetry site for children which published its first anthology Chasing Clouds: Adventures in a Poetry Balloon through Yorkshire Times Publishing in 2022. He has had poems for children shortlisted and highly commended in the Caterpillar Poetry Prize and York Mix Poetry Competitions and he won the inaugural Best Poem of 2022 in The Milk House with Masterclass. He writes regularly for the Yorkshire Times, reviewing poetry collections and publishing articles on a range of subjects. He has delivered poetry workshops for Wordsworth Grasmere and also appeared as the Poet in a Fridge for the Radio Cumbria Poetry Takeaway during the BBC Contains Strong Language Festival at Tullie House in Carlisle.
Patrick Deeley: Pungent or even pugnacious in tone, the framing device of questions to do with various mythologies brings us into and through the poem in a fresh and appealing way.