Shortlist

In this week’s Podcast we’re delighted to present the five poems shortlisted in the 2023 Peter Porter Poetry Prize. This happily alliterative prize was created in 2005 and renamed in 2011, the year after the great poet’s death. Peter Rose introduces our far-flung quintet, who then introduce and read their poems. Further details and illuminating comments on the individual poems by the judges can be found here. We hope you enjoy these wonderful poems. It’s a great way to get to know them before the prize ceremony on Thursday, 19 January.

Ventriloquist’s Dummy
Jennifer Harrison

I

          I can’t tell where I’m going
but shall I memorise the shape of streets
          the slope of bridges, the vertigo?
today I’m carried somewhere new –
I’m lost, in pieces, and I rattle