The Poetry Business Competition 2026 Winners' Launch

Online booking closes at 12.30pm but free tickets will be available on the door.

Join The Poetry Business at Wordsworth Grasmere to celebrate the winners of the 2026 International Book & Pamphlet Competition, chosen by Kim Moore. The winners Derval Tubridy and Tom Weir will be reading poems from their prize-winning pamphlets, alongside the competition runners-up David Hale and Ellie Grant.

The Winning Collections

I Will Say That by Derval Tubridy

Derval Tubridy is an Irish poet whose work responds to the intimate traces that bind and blind. Born in Bandon, Co. Cork, she is based in Dublin. Professor Emerita of Goldsmiths, London, she is the author of Thomas Kinsella: The Peppercanister Poems (UCD Press, 2001) and Samuel Beckett and the Language of Subjectivity (Cambridge UP, 2018). Winner of the 2023 Red Line Poetry Competition, she was Highly Commended in the 2024 Fool For Poetry Chapbook competition, the 2025 Southword Editor’s Poetry Prize and the 2025 Patrick Kavanagh Prize. She is a 2026 Irish Writer’s Centre National Mentoring Programme Awardee. Her poetry has been published in The North, The Stinging Fly, Howl, The Irish Times, The Stony Thursday Poetry Book, The Monster’s Back and is forthcoming in Southward.

Negativity Bias by Tom Weir

Tom Weir’s poetry has been Highly Commended in both The Forward Prize and The National Poetry Competition. He has won the Magma Editor’s Choice Prize and was one of the inaugural winners of the Templar IOTA Shots competition. He has published two previous collections All That Falling and Ruin, for which he received a grant from the Arts Council. Having spent many years in the North of England, he now resides in the South-West, where he can often be found with a compass and small torch plotting a way back up north.

The Runners-Up

The Orchard by David Hale

Born in Scotland, David Hale lives in Gloucestershire. Happenstance published his first pamphlet The Last Walking Stick Factory, Templar published his second In Bedlam’s Wood. His first collection Dancing under a Bloodless Moon was published by Eyewear in December 2020. He’s worked as a teacher in mainstream and alternative provision, also as an ESOL teacher abroad, and more recently has taught English to refugees and asylum seekers in Gloucester.

The Emerging by Ellie Grant

Ellie Grant is a poet from London. She lives in Manchester, where she completed her BA in 2019, and her MA in 2025. She won the Centre for New Writing MA Poetry Prize and was shortlisted for the Bridport Prize. She is working towards her first collection.

How to book and attend

Tickets are free. If you book and can no longer attend, please get in touch to cancel your ticket to allow others to attend.

Access

Fire evacuation information for visitors with limited mobility

This event takes place at the Jerwood Centre Reading Room. At Wordsworth Grasmere we currently in the process of upgrading our emergency evacuation equipment to meet current standards. Unfortunately, this means we do not currently have evacuation chairs available to assist visitors with limited mobility to evacuate the Jerwood Centre in the event of an emergency, when the lift will not be available. This means we cannot safely welcome visitors who are unable to evacuate without the use of an evacuation chair. If you have mobility needs that might impede your ability to evacuate independently, please contact us directly at enquiries@wordsworth.org.uk before booking so that we can discuss options for a safe visit.