Monday 10th February 2025 Very chuffed to have won 2nd prize in the Molecules Unlimited poetry competition judged by Imtiaz Dharker for my poem On Seaham Beach. It was inspired by talking to a young man collecting sea glass on the beach for his girlfriend to show her that ‘broken things can be beautiful’. A gift of a line.
January 2025 My review of Just Breathe by Trish Kerrison was published here
February 2024 My review of Half Other , a wonderful collection by Peter Wallis, was published here.
Monday 24th July 2023 The Year of Two Winters was published today! I love the wintery cover. It has been sent out for review to six different poetry magazines so I hope it will do well.
Saturday 22nd April 2023 A lovely pamphlet from Candlestick Press arrived in the post: Ten Poems about Wine. I am very proud to be quoted on the back from my poem Tasting Notes that was included in this new publication.
Friday 29th July 2022 I am thrilled to be a joint winner of the Geoff Stevens Memorial Prize which means Indigo Dreams will publish a full collection in 2023! I was so excited I managed to fall over and break my left wrist playing tennis that morning. Oh well – can still type and start working on poems for the collection.
Thursday 17th March 2022
Offcumdens, a collection of 41 black and white photographs of Yorkshire by Bob Hamilton paired with my poems has been published by Fair Acre Press. Read more about our project here
Other news
Lovely review of Offcumdens by Hannah Stone in Dreamcatcher 45 July 2022
Great review of Offcumdens by poet Sue Wallace-Haddad on 15.5.22 in London Grip. Read it here.
John Foggin gave Offcumdens a wonderful boost on his webpage. You can read it here
Rave review of Offcumdens in The Yorkshire Times on 21.4.22 by Steve Whitaker. Read it here
Yvette Huddleston from The Yorkshire Post wrote an article about how Offcumdens was first conceived. It was in the Culture section and published on Friday 18th March 2022. Read more here.
And Hello Yorkshire published a feature on Offcumdens on 22nd March. Read it here.
We were interviewed by the poet Lydia Kennaway about Offcumdens on East Leeds Chapel FM radio on the programme Love the Words on Tuesday 8th March. See: https://www.chapelfm.co.uk/?s=Love+The+Words
2021
My poems Dancing Girls and Eighteen Miles won 1st and 2nd prizes on the Saltaire Poetry Festival competition. I had won 3rd prize in 2019 in the same competition with Engagement, so I was very pleased and surprised to score a hat trick. All three poems are in Offcumdens.
Ilkley Walter Swan Poetry competition 2021: My poem The year of two winters won 3rd prize. See video of my reading and Ian Duhig’s comments here
Songwriting
2021: Opera North ran a wonderful free virtual songwriting course with Thanda Gumede and Dave Evans in February- March. We were put into small groups and over six weeks collaborated to produce a 3.5 minute song on the topic of Writing Home. We used Soundtrap software to record ourselves and harmonise. It was great fun. When I’ve discovered how to upload sound files I will put in a link.
2020: I collaborated with a composer to write a song for the Leeds Lieder Festival in April 2020. Mark Bowler has turned my haiku sequence Pentaplex into a song – see below.
We discovered we have both been inspired creatively by the wonderful workings of the gut. See Mark’s song: https://soundcloud.com/mbowlercomposer/nothing-but-a-tube-a-darwinist-lullaby
Final product of Pentaplex here:
Pleasing reviews of Heart Murmur.
See: https://londongrip.co.uk/2020/02/london-grip-poetry-review-emma-storr/
http://www.inksweatandtears.co.uk/pages//?s=heart+murmur
Raceme no.8 autumn/winter 2019: Shirley Wright reviewed Heart Murmur and two of the poems from the pamphlet appear in the magazine.
And in the Journal of the Royal College of General Practitioners May 2020: https://bjgp.org/content/bjgp/70/694/251.2.full.pdf
My poem Insomnia was Highly Commended in the York Poetry Prize 2020.
Emma Storr 