Below you’ll find the poems which were commended by the judges as part of our TASTE Poetry Competition in 2024.

Leo Boix, ‘A Latin American Sonnet XCV’

Leo Boix is a bilingual Latinx poet born in Argentina who lives and works in the UK. His debut English collection, Ballad of a Happy Immigrant (Chatto & Windus, 2021), was awarded the PBS Wild Card Choice. He was the recipient of the Bart Wolffe Poetry Award, the Keats-Shelley Prize, a PEN Award, and The Society of Authors’ Foundation and K. Blundell Trust. His second collection, Southernmost: Sonnets, is forthcoming with Chatto & Windus (Vintage) in early 2025.

Marka Rifat, ‘Sweet Harvest’

Marka began writing and performing poems a decade ago, has won several awards and her poetry appears in 36 national and international anthologies, most recently in Grey Hen Press, Dreich and The French Literary Review. She also writes stories, essays, and plays. Marka lives on the NE coast of Scotland, occasionally managing to grow fruit and veg.

Michael Brown, ‘Visiting Hour’

Michael was longlisted in the National Poetry Competition (2023). His work has been published widely in magazines including Poetry Salzburg, Finished Creatures, Magma, Poetry Wales, The Rialto, The North and Poetry News. He has one full collection, Where Grown Men Go (Salt 2019) and three pamphlets the most recent of which, Right of Way (Maytree), was published last year. In 2017 he was awarded a Northern Writers’ Award. He is currently a research student at Newcastle University.

Mariah Whelan, ‘Hunger’

Mariah Whelan is a British-Irish poet living in Oxfordshire. Her verse-novel the love i do to you was shortlisted for the Poetry Book Awards, the Melita Hume Prize and won the AM Heath Prize. She has been a Poet-in-Residence at The University of Cambridge and a Fellow in Creative Practice at UCL. She edited the Arts Council-funded poetry magazine bath magg from 2019 until April 2024.

Andrew George, ‘The New Italian’

Andrew George was born and lives in London where he works as a barrister. His debut collection Milk Round was published by Live Canon in 2015. His poems have appeared in magazines such as Magma and the Rialto. He is Chair of Trustees of the charity, Modern Poetry in Translation.

Siobhan Ward, ‘Table Manners’

Siobhan Ward lives and works in London. Her poems have been commended in the Segora International Poetry Competition 2020, Cannon Poets Sonnet or Not Competition 2022 and Ver Open Poetry Competition 2023. Poems have also been published and are forthcoming in print and online journals including Porridge, Wildfire Words and Dreich. She’s especially grateful for the classes she’s taken with poetry tutors Ella Frears and Cahal Dallat.

Dulcie Shaw, ‘Teenage Nostos’