The shortlist for this year’s Fenton Aldeburgh First Collection Prize has been announced. From a total of 53 entries, reduced to a long-list of 22 titles, this year’s three poet-judges – Imtiaz Dharker, Robert Seatter (Chair) and Anthony Wilson – have this week arrived at a hard-won collective shortlist for the Fenton Aldeburgh First Collection Prize 2014. Their individual shortlists spanned nine books – in other words, plenty of early consensus mixed with some different preferences – but they’re agreed on the following outstanding five as the final contenders:

Bright Travellers by Fiona Benson (Cape Poetry)
Moontide by Niall Campbell (Bloodaxe Books)
My Family and Other Superheroes by Jonathan Edwards (Seren Books)
Division Street by Helen Mort (Chatto & Windus)
Self-Portrait with the Happiness by David Tait (Smith/Doorstop Books)

The winner will be announced at the Festival’s opening main reading – on Friday 7th November at 8.30pm – and he or she will receive the cash prize of £2,500, a week of paid ‘protected’ writing time in 2015 on the East Suffolk coast, plus a fee-paying invitation to read at next year’s Aldeburgh Poetry Festival.

Division Street was also shortlisted for the T S Eliot Prize in 2013 and earned Helen Mort a place on the Next Generation Poets 2014. Read poems, download discussion notes and watch her reading from the book on her author page.

More about the Prize, its judges and previous winners here.