Tŷ Newydd Course Awarded as Prize as Winners Announced For The Rialto ‘Nature And Place’ Competition 2018

Again this year, Literature Wales has sponsored a prize for the The Rialto magazine Nature and Place Poetry Competition.

The Rialto has announced the winners of the 2018 Nature and Place poetry competition, run in partnership with the RSPB. Now in its sixth year, the Nature and Place competition received over 3,300 entries, and was judged this year by Michael Longley, one of the UK’s foremost contemporary poets, known for his sharp observation of the natural world.

Rae Howells won first place for her poem ‘The Winter-King’ and will receive a £1000 prize. Mark Roper took second prize of £500 for ‘Owl’ and Jane Wheeler third prize of a place on a creative writing course at Literature Wales’ Tŷ Newydd for ‘Lark’s Song for a Deserted Farmhouse’.

Matt Howard, RSPB Regional Fundraiser and member of The Rialto board, said of the competition: “We are again delighted with the response to the competition. That so many people have written so wonderfully about the natural world illustrates just how much nature means to us. We are so very thankful to our competition partners and to all who entered.”

Editor of The Rialto, Mike Mackmin, added, “This year’s entries were rather special: I liked the focus on detail, the number of different creatures and phenomena observed, the richness of the feelings in the poems, and the overall sense of urgency about our relationship with the planet.”

For more information about the Nature and Place competition, please visit: www.therialto.co.uk