Filipina nurse wins leading British poetry prize
MANILA, Philippines — Philippine poet Romalyn Ante has been selected as the Jerwood Compton Poetry Fellows for 2020/21.
She was joined by two other United Kingdom poets Dzifa Benson and Jamie Hale. Each poet will receive £15,000 and is given a year of critical support and mentoring.
Romalyn is an award-winning Filipino-born, Wolverhampton-based poet, translator, editor and essayist. She is co-founding editor of harana poetry, an online magazine for poets writing in English as a second or parallel language, and her accolades include the Poetry London Prize, Manchester Poetry Prize, Society of Author's Foundation Award, Developing Your Creative Practice and Creative Future Literary Award, among others. Apart from being a writer, she also works full-time as a nurse, specializing in providing different psychotherapeutic treatments.
Turning the idea of an arts prize on its head, the Jerwood Compton Poetry Fellowship aims to provide 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.
The universe has given me such a blessing and I'm so humbled by it???? Thank you Jerwood Compton for awarding me this poetry fellowship???? Massive thanks to my nominator ???? & all the judges for believing in what I can do as a poet. 1/ https://t.co/60NP1GgtkT
— ????Romalyn Ante???? (@RomalynAnte) November 2, 2021
Recognizing 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 toward 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 recognizing 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 Sode (2019-20 Jerwood Compton Poetry Fellows).
The three award recipients illustrate how diverse and exciting poetry has become in the 21st century. Through activism, visual arts, theater 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.
According to the organization, 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 program’s manager Dr. Nathalie Teitler and access to experts drawn from the poetry world and beyond. Nathalie has run literature programs promoting diversity in the UK for over 20 years, founding the first national mentoring and translation programs for writers living in exile. She is the Director of The Complete Works – a national development program that helped to raise the number of Black and Asian poets published by major presses.
