Three of the UK’s most exciting poets Romalyn Ante, Dzifa Benson, and Jamie Hale have been selected as the Jerwood Compton Poetry Fellows for 2020/21. Two of this year’s winners, Dzifa Benson and Jamie Hale. are London based poet playwrights.
Each poet receives £15,000 and is given a year of critical support and mentoring. Turning the idea of an arts prize on its head, the Jerwood Compton Poetry Fellowship provides each poet with the time and space to focus on their craft and fulfil their potential with no expectation that they produce a particular work or outcome.
Recognising the power of potential, the Jerwood Compton Poetry Fellowship’s approach to funding advocates for a change in art funding practice in the UK, providing opportunities outside commercial pressures for artistic growth and new ideas to flourish. The Fellowship provides financial support towards the development of under-supported and diverse artistic practices across the UK, with a focus on the pursuit of artistic experimentation and the space for artists to thrive.
This alternative approach to recognising and rewarding outstanding poets, is now in its third and final edition. Previous recipients are: Raymond Antrobus, Jane Commane and Jackie Hagan (2017-18 Jerwood Compton Poetry Fellows) and Hafsah Aneela Bashir, Anthony Joseph and Yomi Ṣode (2019-20 Jerwood Compton Poetry Fellows).
Romalyn Ante, Dzifa Benson, and Jamie Hale illustrate how diverse and exciting poetry has become in the 21st century. Through activism, visual arts, theatre, and drawing from their personal experiences/circumstances, the three poets express their practice through a multitude of ways, opening poetry up to a wide range of audiences. Each poet has produced outstanding work to date and have demonstrated enormous, unselfish generosity towards other poets, giving far more than they have received particularly during the pandemic. They have been selected for the potential they display at this critical point in their individual careers, when the support provided from the Fellowship will make the most difference.
Alongside the freely given grant of £15,000, the three Fellows will each receive mentoring from the programme’s manager Dr Nathalie Teitler FRSA and access to experts drawn from the poetry world and beyond. Nathalie has run literature programmes promoting diversity in the UK for over 20 years, founding the first national mentoring and translation programmes for writers living in exile. She is the Director of The Complete Works – a national development programme that helped to raise the number of Black and Asian poets published by major presses.
Sarah Crown, Director of Literature, Arts Council England, said: “The Jerwood Compton Poetry Fellowship continues to champion change in art funding practice in the UK as fearlessly as it has done for the last four years. Providing mentoring, financial support and, most importantly, time and space for under-represented poets to experiment and hone their craft – without the external pressures of meeting a particular outcome – nurtures creativity and enriches the sector as a whole.
The selectors have had the tough task of choosing three recipients from what was yet again an extremely strong set of nominees. Romalyn, Dzifa and Jamie join a long line of talented Fellows, and I am excited to see how they flourish over the coming year.”
The three recipients were selected from a strong field of nominees by award-winning poet and writer Joelle Taylor; writer, performer, and facilitator Yomi Ṣode (Jerwood Compton Poetry fellow 2019); and award-winning poet Pascale Petit.
Nominations were made by a pool of over 200 specialists nationally including poets, publishers, editors, literary development agencies, artists, funders and festival organisers.
