presenting at Tongues & Grooves, Portsmouth, Romanian UK Tour, 2009
Anne Stewart is a poet and provider of service to poets and poetry organisations. She has judged several poetry competitions, run various workshops including day-workshops on “Form and Creativity” and, as part of Poetry on the Lake festivals organised by Gabriel Griffin in Orta San Giulio, short writing workshops with Italian students. She has led poetry p f delegations on working visits to Universites in Munich and Bucharest.
Her poetry has won or been placed in several poetry competitions, including winning (and shortlistings in) the Bridport Prize, the Silver Wyvern (Poetry on the Lake, Italy) and the Southport Poetry Prize, and a long-listing (top 130) in the National Poetry Competition. In 2014, she was awarded a Hawthornden Fellowship. Her work has been widely published in poetry magazines and anthologies. Her first collection, The Janus Hour was published by Oversteps Books in 2010 and her second full UK collection, The Last Parent by Second Light Publications (2019) (buy online from poetry p f. Book Club Offer (enquire by email, see Contact) 6 copies for £40 plus feedback.
3 small bilingual collections are published in Bucharest: any minute now / î orice clipă (Eikon, 2023, 19 poems in Eng & Rom, trans. Prof. Dr. Lidia Vianu), Let It Come to Us All / Să vină pentru noi toţi, (Integral, 2017, 17 poems in Eng & Rom, trans. Prof. Dr. Lidia Viana; also illustrated online version, Contemporary Literature Press), Only Here till Friday / Doar de aici până vineri / Solo aqui hasta viernes (Bibliotheca Universalis/Editura PIM, 25 poems, 2015 Eng & Rom, trans. Mădălina Bănucu, Alexandra-Diana Mircea, Izabela-Elvira Vaţe; in 2016 Eng & Sp, trans. Ana-Maria Voicu & Aurelia Ionela Voicu).
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2026 is off to a good start with a handful of poems to be published in magazines, including Acumen and The Frogmore Papers. I continue as Shortlands Poetry Circle’s President – lovely readings at the 2025 Summer Celebration by Doreen Hinchliffe and Anthony Fisher – and as the Kent North West Stanza rep, and handler of the UK side of the poetry pRO translation project with Prof. Dr. Lidia Vianu, who created the MTTLC (learning translation through creative writing) degree course at the University of Bucharest.
Dubbed ‘The Mouliners’ by Holland House staff when we gathered for a residential week there in 2024, we visited again in 2025 and are set to revisit in April this year. Ex-Second Light members also have a few days get-together booked there in August. Second Light closed its door officially in November 2024, after 30 years of its Founder and Coordinator, Dilys Wood, encouraging, supporting, publishing and promoting older women poets, starting at a time when they were barely noticed by editors. It was a privilege to be one of Dilys’s helpers while she set about changing that.
On the run up to Christmas 2025, ’Twas the Night Before Christmas … I’m delighted to have a Christmas poem included in this AudioBook published by Spiracle AudioBooks and to have been one of their readers at the World Launch on 10th November. In the tracklist: poems by over 40 poets, including poets of the past e.g. T S Eliot, Thomas Hardy, Dylan Thomas, W B Yeats and by contemporaries e.g. Wendy Cope, Hilary Davies, Imtiaz Dharker, U A Fanthorpe. The audiobook is sold as a card, for keeping for yourself or sending as a gift to others, which has a Redemption Code on it so that the book can be downloaded or listened to at the Spiracle website.
buy the card £12.
Reading at the RSA in London WC2 in November, Conversations in Poetry. Poet and Event Curator, Sezgin Kemal FRSA organised and introduced the event. Readings by Joelle Taylor FRSA and myself, refreshments in the Muse Cocktail Bar, a 2nd reading by Joelle Taylor, followed by Q&A. The readings were very well received and it was a pleasure to read there.
A few highlights from earlier years:
2024: Joy Howard’s anthology, Two Ravens – Explorations of mind and memory was published under her Grey Hen Press imprint – more (& more books) here. This is another major anthology (279pp) from Grey Hen, featuring many established women poets, 128 poets in all. Joy Howard is an excellent editor, and, as such, I’m very pleased whenever she includes poems of mine in her publications.
November 2023 saw my 3rd dual-language collection published by Eikon in Bucharest. Translated by, and with a Foreword by, Prof. Dr. Lidia Vianu, the book, any minute now / în orice clipă has 19 poems in Eng & Rom. It was reviewed by Alison Brackenbury in ARTEMISpoetry Issue 32. See more, and links to poems, at publications page
Haiku published in HQ Quarterly were as a result of being Shortlisted in the Poetry on the Lake (Italy) poetry competition. While at the festival (September 2023), I was presented with the newly-created Bronze Wyvern Award, for services to poetry, Alessi bowl and plaque make a lovely companion for the Silver Wyvern (bowl and plaque) already in pride of place from winning the 2014 poetry competition.
Anthologies (published in 1 or more in every year from 2003 to 2024):
World Poetic and Artistic Anthology (2022, Bibliotecha Universalis/Editura Pim), featuring 27 poets from 11 countries, each poet represented by a handful of poems in their original written language.
Locked Down (2021, Poetry Space, ed. Susan Jane Sims)
Poems for the Year 2020 (2021, Shoestring Press, ed. Merryn Williams)
Lovely, Dark and Deep – poems about woods (2021, Grey Hen Press ‘Landscape’ series, ed. Joy Howard)
Earth Days Numbered – 20 poems for the planet (2021, Grey Hen Press ‘Climate Change’ duo, ed. Joy Howard)
The Enfield Poets First Anthology (2021, Chela Publishing, eds. Julian Bishop, Mary Duggan, Anthony Fisher; thank you to Enfield Poets for welcoming me as an online member of the group)
Haunted (2021, Poetry on the Lake, ed./selector D M Thomas, Gabriel Griffin). The poem included was longlisted in the ‘Haunted – uncomfortable reading’ poetry and short story competition.
Fanfare (2015, Second Light Publications, eds. Wendy French, Dilys Wood). One of several of Second Light’s major anthologies of work by women poets – 198pp, 167 poets, 241 poems… From review by Dr. R. V. Bailey: “As a trumpet-call of celebration, Fanfare is exactly the right title for this anthology. Adventurous … witty and moving, intelligent … these poems … will shock and delight you.”.
and The Shortlands Poetry Circle’s Writers Group latest anthology, the rainbow comes and goes, published in celebration of the Circle’s 10th anniversary of their Centenary.
The Book of Love & Loss (2014, eds. R.V. Bailey, June Hall), a beautiful hardback anthology of over 380 pages, dedicated to the memory of U A Fanthorpe, and very-well received.
Several shortlistings and commendations, including more than one occasion of all three of the poems submitted to the Bridport Prize making it into the “2nd round, top 12%” of entries, shortlisting in The Frogmore Poetry Prize (poem published in The Frogmore Papers) and poems/images selected and published in ARTEMISpoetry Issues 26 to the final issue, 33, and two postcard poems and a poster poem were published by Enfield Poets (Chela Publishing).
You can do it! Yes, you can… Photo taken by Philippa Lawrence in 2009, when she and Anne were working on Philippa’s" pamphlet collection, From Memory’s Wardrobe. Speaking nicely to misbehaving machines works more often than you might think! Or is it the ‘laying on of hands’?
to buy From Memory’s Wardrobe: poetry p f shop online (and type ‘Wardrobe’ into the filter box)
Anne Stewart, 20 Clovelly Way, Orpington, Kent, BR6 0WD. UK.
Tel: +44(0) 1689 811394 Mobile: +44(0) 7850 537489
e-mail Anne
Copyright © 2008 Anne Stewart. All rights reserved.
