Tender and true, complex and profound, Quiet is a beautiful balancing act of a book – a debut that brings Adukwei Bulley fully formed, starting something,” they added. Davina Baconis studying English and Environmental Science in Cornwall. In 2018, she won the BBC Young Writers’ Award and earlier this year, they had an article published in shado mag. They enjoy exploring ideas about identity, community, and the environment through short stories, poetry, and essays. Adukwei Bulley is an alumna of the Barbican Young Poets and recipient of an Eric Gregory award. The judges said Quiet was “a quiet revolution of a book – subtle, supple and serious”.

The judges described Scary Monsters as a “work of beautifully composed genius”. “This is a book that troubles and disquiets, dazzles and delights, and with lively wit and intelligence, will also make you laugh darkly,” the judges added. Anthony Cummins in the Guardian described the book as “slyly intelligent”.

Ruth Awololais a long time reader, writer, appreciator and believer in the power of poetry. She has been performing her own poetry since 2015 and writes for a range of audiences including poetry for children. The ten Young Critics are: Ruth Awolola, Davina Bacon, Aliyah Begum, Noah Jacob, Abondance Matanda, Lily McDermott, Holly Moberley, SZ Shao, Mukisa Verrall and Eric Yip. Highlights of the year include the Heaney-esque lyricism of British-Indian poet Zaffar Kunial's accomplished debut Us.' (Tristram Fane Saunders, Daily Telegraph, Books of the Year)

Scary Monsters was joined on the fiction shortlist by NoViolet Bulawayo’s Glory, Sheila Heti’s Pure Colour, Daisy Hildyard’s Emergency and Elizabeth Strout’s Lucy by the Sea.

2022

That could come across as trite and pat, but the poem it ends (‘The Wind in the Willows’ – my emphasis) brings the book’s themes together with a craft that supports the virtuosity. My parents. In very different ways, my mother who read a lot of literature and then stopped before she had me, and my father who couldn’t read English at all when he arrived here and wrote in capital letters (e.g. on betting slips and the occasional card, FROM DAD, where he let the other words do the talking). Noah Jacobis an Arab-British poet and performer. She is an editor and columnist for Zindabad Zine and alum of The Writing Room and the Roundhouse Poetry Collective, having placed second in the Roundhouse Poetry Slam 2021. She has been featured in SLAMbassadors, Kalopsia Lit, Shubbak Festival and Camden Festival. Although this poem describes events in 1616 and 1066, the closing line: “Shapes. Spreading from the future on the beach.” speaks as much of those who come to Britain today for safety and shelter as it does of conquest or invasive species. What’s more English than villagers gathering at the War Memorial on Armistice Day? In our village some of those present still carry the names of those called by Wilfred Owen’s bugles. What’s more English than leather on willow on a summer’s day? Round here, sons and fathers play for the village teams while spectators and the countryside doze gently beyond the boundary. What’s more English than England’s green and pleasant land? The landscape we idealise defines our notion of our country as clearly as the Lionesses.

SZ Shaois a British Asian creative based in London. Their written work revolves around gender, power and connectivity with the more-than-human. SZ has been commended in several Young Poets Network challenges, won third prize in the 2022 Talking Glass challenge, and second prize in the 2021 poetry translation challenge.Kunial’s style is a wise vernacular that Auden would have loved . . . Six is a pamphlet to read and re-read; its words are so plain and so well put together that you won’t realise until much later how permanently they’ve marked you, like a grass stain.' (Alex Hayden-Williams, Varsity) Literary enrichment follows the light-bearing “ gl” words conjured in line 12. The foxgloves are enchanted into “Oberon’s banks of eglantine” and, although the gul of Gulliver is “shrunken”, it too opens out, and becomes the word which “says ‘rose’ in my fatherland”. Both words “fatherland” and “motherland” are beautifully rediscovered here, newly flowering in the marriage-knot of countries the poet inherits from his parents, his mother’s England and his father’s Pakistan. Aliyah Begumis a nineteen-year-old poet and performer, who was Birmingham’s Young Poet Laureate between 2018-2020. She is a commended Foyle Young Poet and her work has been featured on Young Poets Network, in anthologies and on the radio. She has worked with the Royal Shakespeare Company and the BBC, and is currently studying English Language and Literature at the University of Oxford. They said Constructing a Nervous System was “wholly a deeply moving delight” and a “book unlike any other; a thrilling, generous, spirited and surprising read that remakes culture, redresses history, renews and repurposes everything it touches, and passes on these gifts of reinvention and renewal to everyone who’ll read it.”