Ready for yet another awesome announcement? We thought so.
After a long search, we've found someone we think is just wonderful to judge our International Poetry Prize!
We're so excited to welcome Rebecca Bird to Grindstone this year to preside over the International Poetry Prize!
Rebecca is a poet and performer with a long (and ever growing) list of accolades. We fell in love with her work immediately, and when finding out what she'd accomplished, and in what ways, we knew that she was the right person to help us navigate this ever-changing landscape that is poetry.
Over the last few decades, poetry has changed and evolved into something more. Digital spaces have allowed poets from all backgrounds and corners of the earth to use their voices. And with this steady onslaught of poetry pouring out of the net, we've seen an expedited change in the way that poetry functions, and the way that it pervades our lives. Poetry is all around us, and has changed from a traditional art form to something free-flowing and ever present. More emphasis has been placed and spoken word art, and with the evolution of music alongside, with sub genres like rap and it's permutations, and in the UK especially the advent of Grime, we've seen poetry air ever closer to its musical roots.
Everything must undergo a natural progression and process of adaptation, should it wish to persist - and it's apparent, now more than ever, that poetry does. So, who better than someone involved and immersed in that scene of modern poetry, spoken word performance, and seething musicality, to help us find the best poets around, and help give them a platform to present their poetry to the world.
Rebecca Bird was born in 1991 in Devon, and attended De Montfort University, where she graduated in 2014 with a First Class Honours in Creative Writing with English.
During 2013, she acted as a Session Guitarist and Songwriter with several established artist. In the same year, she was acting Editor for the Hinterland Journal of Contemporary Poetry.
In 2014, Rebecca was nominated by Ofi Press for the Pushcart Prize, and in the following year was nominated by Under the Radar for the Pushcart Best Single Poem Prize 2015.
In 2017, Robert Peake, an established American Poet living in Britain, and creator of Transatlantic Poetry on Air, named her one of five poets to watch in 2017 in an article for Huff Post.
Branching into Prose, she was also successful with a short story called 'Good Little Awakenings', published by Litro.
Rebecca also has a long list of poetry publications both online and in print with And Other Poems, Antiphon, Bare Fiction, The Bakery, Cake, Coffee House, The Crane Papers, Envoi, The English Chicago Review, Eunoia Review, Four and Twenty, Glitterwolf, Ink Sweat and Tears, HARK, The Interpreter’s House, The New Writer, Ofi Press (Mexico City), The Poetry Shed, Poetry Quarterly, Prole, The Rialto, The Stare’s Nest, Under the Radar, The Whistling Fire, The Best of British Poetry, as well as placing in the Crystal Voices – Crystal Clear Creators’ 10th Anniversary Anthology.
In 2017, Rebecca released her first collection 'Shrinking Ultraviolet', published by Eyewear Publishing.
All of these achievements are enough to tell anyone that Rebecca is a very talented, and very well versed poet (pun definitely intended), whose recommendation and support would be a huge accolade to anyone looking to make a name for themselves in this difficult publishing climate.
We're very grateful for her support, and we look forward to hearing more about her work, and what she thinks the future holds for poetry!
We'll be publishing an interview with Rebecca in our upcoming Magazine.
If you'd like to read some of Rebecca's work, you can find some, along with links, on her website: https://www.rebeccabird.co.uk
See you soon!
Daniel
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