Psychiatrist is Fenland's new Poet Laureate for 2020/21
Fenland has a new Poet Laureate with the results of this year's competition announced this week proclaiming consultant psychiatrist Kim Allen the title winner.
The Fenland Poet Laureate competition was relaunched last year, after a hiatus of two years.
On its relaunch, the competition was open solely to poets who live, work or attend school in Fenland or North East Cambridgeshire.
Arts Council England gave a generous grant towards the Fenland Arts Development Scheme, of which the Fenland Poet Laureate Award is part.
The annual competition has a new adjudicator each year and this year the judge was John Lyons recognised children's poet born in Trinidad.
Judging is kept completely anonymous, with entries numerically coded by organiser Elisabeth Sennitt Clough, to maintain anonymity of the entrants.
Eleven-year-old Layla Gull from March, a pupil at Wisbech Grammar School, was chosen as the Young Fenland Poet Laureate.
Regarding the winning entry from Kim, a consultant psychiatrist working with the Fenland Adult Locality Team based at Agenoria House in Wisbech, John wrote:"This is a love poem that grew out of the intimacy and knowledge of the Fens.
"When read aloud there is an attractive free verse rhythm in keeping with the overall quiet emotional tone of the poem. I do love the implied certainty and admiration of a good relationship expressed in the first two lines of the first stanza: The personification of the Fens is touching.
"It is a love that will endure whatever happens in the future. 'But here’s to us my dear' says it all; a stability of a loving relationship remains."
On Layla's winning entry John commented there are "sure signs of a poetic sensibility" and said that Layla is a "a poet of promise".
Ann Clements, who was born in Wisbech, was runner-up while Hilary Parry Newton in the Isle was third place in the adult competition.
While Sarah Clough, nine, from Murrow and a pupil at Wisbech Grammar School's Magdalene House, was runner-up and Jasmin Gaborit-Carter, from Wisbech and also a pupil at the Grammar School, was third place in the junior competition.
