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MOTH ART PRIZES MAGAZINE THEATRE
THE MOTH POETRY PRIZE 2024 SHORTLIST CHOSEN BY FIONA BENSON



Towards Holkham by Naoise Gale (UK)

‘Told in couplets, this poem is an oblique, child’s-eye account of a grandfather’s survival of genocide and his subsequent trauma, as well as the appalling attempts to ‘treat’ him. I particularly admired the threads of imagery that run through this poem – of beachcombings and shellfish, of dental equipment, of weather fronts; the sectioned grandfather mirrored at a strange and wonky angle as the grandma sections the granddaughter’s hair into braids. Words travel through the poem with strange mutations of meaning. What a spectacularly kind gesture of humour too, at the end of the poem, as the grandfather becomes the observer, not the observed, and declares everyone mad.’ Fiona Benson
 
Naoise Galeis from West Yorkshire and is currently based in Norwich, where she is a CHASE-funded PhD researcher at the University of East Anglia, studying poetry and psychosis. She won the Ledbury Poetry Prize in 2022 and was highly commended in the Welsh Poetry and the Winchester Poetry Prizes in 2024. Her debut pamphlet, After the Flood Comes the Apologies, was published with Nine Pens Press in 2021, and her collection Blue But Not Broken, which focused on autistic girlhood, was released with Femme Salvé Books last year. In her free time, Gale is a deputy editor at Anthopocene poetry magazine. You can find her poems in Magma, Atrium and Tears in the Fence.
 



Raccoon Baculum Good Luck Charm by Andrew Krivák (USA)

‘Telling the tale of a loving, childless couple, its crystal clear, no-fuss narrative has the breadth and depth of an Alice Munro short story; yet it also has the pacing, music and grace of an absolutely breathtaking poem. Its shifts between registers – from the quotidian “They were young and just married and only thinking / of children” to the epiphanic “soundless and / at peace through all that lack” move with enviable fluidity; so too it’s weaving in of a convincing vernacular, which brings with it such a deep sense of character. The shape of the thing is beautiful too, coming back in the end to “soundless and at peace” in a beautiful arc that takes in balloon rides, Stagg beer, gold-plating, a strange fertility charm, a rocket to Venus, and the loveliest moments of affection.’ Fiona Benson
 
Andrew Krivák is the author of four novels, two chapbooks of poetry and two works of nonfiction. His 2011 debut novel, The Sojourn, was a National Book Award finalist and winner of both the Dayton Literary Peace Prize for fiction and the inaugural Chautauqua Prize. He followed The Sojourn with The Signal Flame in 2017, The Bear in 2020, and Like the Appearance of Horses in 2023. His chapbooks of poetry include Islands and Ghosts of the Monadnock Wolves. Krivák is currently Discussion Facilitator for the New Hampshire Department of Corrections’ Family Connection Centre and Visiting Lecturer on English at Harvard University. He lives in Somerville, Massachusetts and Jaffrey, New Hampshire with his wife and three children.
  



Taipan by Anthony Lawrence (Australia)

‘This poem has a rare originality – of thought, observation and absolutely brilliant imagery; the father’s snake-bite rash is likened to “an early explorer’s map of Tasmania / that darkened like slate in wet weather”; the dog arrives “in a cornering broadside scrabble of nails”. I love how the poem comes at grief sideways – a portrait of a dog that turns out to be a portrait of the man who owned him – the speaker’s dead father. On this lonely farm the dog is the only living being that remembers her father – dog as archive of the father – dog who pines in the place “where he yarded sheep // and poled them under dark water to open the fleece.” And dog is not just an archive of the father / farmer but of farming practices, this lost farm which is in truth “only a reclaimed swamp with signs // warning of unexploded artillery shells on the periphery”.’ Fiona Benson
 
Anthony Lawrence has published nineteen collections of poems and a novel. His books and individual poems have won a number of awards, including the Prime Ministers Literary Award for Poetry (Australia), the Ginkgo Prize for eco poetry, the Philip Hodgins Medal and the Blake Poetry Prize. A major theme of many poems is human interaction with, and intervention within the natural world. Until recently he was teaching Creative Writing and Writing Poetry at Griffith University in Queensland. Now he is working full time on fiction, poetry and a memoir ‘What the Field Guide Saw Outside the Field’. He lives on Moreton Bay, Queensland.
 



The Last Dragons On Earth: a travelogue by Shelley Stenhouse (USA)

‘Wow this poem is epic. In length as well as scale. Flashy and sparkling as the “Disney-bright” waters of the ocean, the poem’s protagonists amuse, but their actions tell a story of rich and privileged tourism – its consumerism, sense of entitlement, exploitation and downright cruelty. The poem was also deeply thought-provoking on matters of appropriation; moments of elegy and beauty (babies are buried in trees) are undercut by random travel facts, accumulated like pearl-strands, like property. The poems’ skewering of these rich tourists is not without nuance however, and the poem won me over with its moments of gentleness and humour as well as its moments of horror. The handling of voice, narrative and imagery were all awe-inspiring.’ Fiona Benson
 
Shelley Stenhouse recently won third place in Australian Book Review’s Jolley Prize for her story ‘M’. Previously, she won the Palette Poetry Prize (judged by Edward Hirsch), the Pavement Saw Press Award for her poetry collection, PANTS, a New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA) Fellowship, and an Allen Ginsberg Award. She was a National Poetry Series finalist, had two Pushcart Prize nominations (one by Tony Hoagland), and three residencies at Yaddo Art Colony. Her poetry collection, Impunity, was published by NYQ Books. Her poetry and fiction have been published in New York Quarterly, Antioch Review, Prairie Schooner, Quarterly West, Nimrod International Journal, Margie, Third Coast, Brooklyn Rail, Washington Square, Enizagam, and Poetry After 9/11: An Anthology of New York Poets (among others). Shelley has read on National Public Radio’s All Things Considered. Her work is forthcoming in NYQ’s anthology, Without a Doubt, and in The Common.
  


POEMS BY THE FOLLOWING WERE ALSO COMMENDED:

Toby Campion is an award-winning poet, playwright and performer from Leicester. Winner of the Aesthetica Creative Writing Award 2024 and shortlisted in the 2024 Forward Prizes, Toby is a former UK National Poetry Slam winner and has performed his work across the UK and internationally, from the Royal Albert Hall to the South Korean National Assembly.
 
‘The form of “My ex does porn now” is beautifully inventive – I love that it tells its narrative entirely through footnotes and asides, and its deadpan tone, which has the rug pulled from underneath it by the devastating last line. This poem, despite its play with an academic format, carries oceans of longing; it is bittersweet and unforgettable.’
 
Rico Craig is an award-winning poet, writer and workshop facilitator. His poetry has been awarded prizes or shortlisted for the Montreal Poetry Prize, Val Vallis Prize, Newcastle Poetry Prize, Dorothy Porter Poetry Prize and University of Canberra Poetry Prize. Bone Ink (UWAP), his first poetry collection, was winner of the 2017 Anne Elder Award and shortlisted for the Kenneth Slessor Poetry Prize 2018. His most recent collections Our Tongues Are Songs (2021) and Nekhau (2022) are published by Recent Work Press. He is currently working on a verse novel for young adults called Flying Hearts which explores friendship, graffiti and class conflict. 

‘The amazingly strong vernacular voice of “Us” in “Snake Eats Tail” reminded me strongly of Les Murray’s poem ‘Pigs’ from Translations from the Natural World. It has the same magic of language. I loved the attention it pays to delivery boys sharing e-bikes, an exploited underclass earning in tiny denominations.’
 
Tishani Doshi was born in Madras, India, and publishes poetry, novels and essays. For fifteen years she worked as the lead dancer of the Chandralekha company, performing on stages across the world, and as such, the body has been a central preoccupation in her work. Her most recent collection, A God at the Door (Bloodaxe Books), was shortlisted for the Forward Poetry Prize 2021. She is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and is a visiting professor at New York University, Abu Dhabi.
 
‘“A Theory on the Origin of Language” is an incredibly thought-provoking poem of primeval fear; both a theory of the evolution of language as a warning system and a desperate gesture towards elegy for the endless casualties of recent aggression in Palestine, Ukraine and beyond. Packed with incredible images, music, sly humour and a fascinating progression of thoughts, I would follow this poem anywhere.’
 
Camille Francois holds a PhD in contemporary British literature and has taught literature, theory, and translation at Cambridge and several French universities. She now teaches at an international secondary school in Paris. Her poems have appeared in the TLS, Oxford Poetry, Mslexia, Magma, Poetry Wales, Under the Radar, The North and elsewhere. She was a runner-up in the 2023 Mslexia single poem competition.
 
‘“The Apple Barn” is a beautiful erotic poem, full of sexual hunger. It reminded me a little of Maggie O’Farrell’s lovemaking scene in an apple barn in Hamnet, and like that scene this poem is full of the ripe apples adding their scent, their tumbling roll and their biblical association with sexuality. Its imagery is at once domestic (cooked strawberries, an infant’s skull) and majestic – the deeper sea, the stars’ improbable beauty. What a sensual act this poem is.’
  
Vicki Husband’s first poetry collection, This Far Back Everything Shimmers, was shortlisted for the Saltire Scottish Poetry Book of the Year 2016. A pamphlet-long poem, Sykkel Saga, came out in 2019. Vicki’s poetry has been widely published, translated into Urdu and Ukrainian, as well as broadcast on the radio and read at international poetry festivals and local libraries. Vicki works for the NHS in community rehabilitation. Her second poetry book, Glasgoscopy, observing health and the city, is due to be published in September by Vagabond Voices.
 
‘This revisiting of a childhood game in “The Memory Game” to speak of a mother’s dementia is almost unbearably moving. I loved its lapses in language as the neural pathways that link objects to their names are lost; it gives the poem a bewitching lyricism. I also loved how the poem grounds itself in everyday acts of care – the details of mopping up tea spills and emolliating fragile skin are tenderly and devastatingly given.’
  
Elizabeth Morton is a yarn teller, poem maker and neuroscience enthusiast from Tāmaki Makaurau, Auckland, New Zealand. She has three collections of poetry published, the latest being Naming the Beasts (Otago University Press, 2022).
 
‘There is a brilliance to the imagery in “Everything” that will not leave me. This poem contains everything – a Hellfire R9X, matching crockery, a comb – and a very poignant one thing – the dark and brilliant boy asking what he’s done.’
  
Weijia Pan is the author of Motherlands, selected by Louise Glück for the 2023 Max Ritvo Poetry Prize and published by Milkweed Editions in 2024. A poet and translator from Shanghai, China, his poems have appeared in AGNI, Boulevard, Cincinnati Review, Copper Nickel, Georgia Review, Poetry Daily, and elsewhere. He received an MFA in Poetry from the University of Houston, where he was a winner of the Paul Verlaine Prize in Poetry. He is currently a Stegner Fellow at Stanford University.
 
‘“Twenty Despair Poems and a Song of Love” contains whole worlds of history and knowledge, told through the wider context of one girl / grandma’s biography. I loved its deliberate redirection of a colonial gaze and a colonial cultural context to Chinese history and a Chinese cultural context – and the poems demonstration that all the contradictions held with individuals and ‘isms’ can be explored through the figure of one woman travelling through time.’
 
Natalie Perman is a writer and editor based in London. A two-time Foyle Young Poet and member of the Roundhouse Poetry Collective 2024-5, she is an alumna of the Genesis Emerging Writers Programme and the Poetry Society T. S. Eliot Young Critics Scheme. Her writing features in Poet Lore, The London Magazine, The White Review, The Oxonian Review, and bath magg, among others. 
 
‘I love “Fishy” for its vivid imagery, and its uneasy negotiations with a sense of the self’s difference and a certain brand of English nationalism gesturing towards histories of slavery and subjugation, as the woman of this poem hesitates on the brink of her lover’s grandparent’s house. It’s depiction of social unease is excruciating. What a terrific depiction of our social milieu and the prejudices that linger.’
 

JOIN US
As we announce the overall winner of the €6,000 prize at a special award ceremony online at 6pm on 9 April – a chance to listen to the poets read their shortlisted works. This is a free event and all are welcome.
 
ABOUT THE PRIZE
The prize was judged blind by Fiona Benson. The overall winner receives €6,000, while the three remaining shortlisted poets each receive €1,000. A further €250 is given to each of the commended poets. The prize will open again in June 2025. 


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