NZSA member, Wes Lee, has been awarded the Free Verse Prize, by The Poetry Society in London. The £500 prize for a single poem was judged this year by Chrissy Williams.

The prize was announced last night at the Free Verse Poetry Book and Magazine Fair in London.

‘The Poetry Society’s Free Verse Poetry Book and Magazine Fair celebrates the vitality of poetry in the UK – an unrivalled opportunity to browse the very best in contemporary poetry publishing and to meet publishers, organisations and poets. With over 70 independent poetry publishers in attendance, Free Verse offers the best chance to find innovative, new, and up-and-coming poetry all in one place.’ — The Poetry Society

Wes Lee’s poem, Possession, is published by The Poetry Society online and will appear in the Summer 2024 edition of Poetry News as well as in the Free Verse programme issued to all attendees of the Fair. The poem can be read here.

“I read so many compelling poems, but ‘Possession’ felt to me the most arresting, the most urgent, the most relentless. Its disruptiveness keeps calling me back, and it casts a well-controlled uneasiness, with all its violence and threat, its “grinning and appeasing”, and its derailing of conventional narrative experience.” ‑ Chrissy Williams