Joanna Lowry has won the Mslexia Women's Poetry Pamphlet Competition for her debut pamphlet The Man Whose Brain Turned to Glass. The winning pamphlet will be co-published by Bloodaxe Books and Mslexia in September.  

The competition’s judge, Imtiaz Dharker, said: “In poem after poem, Lowry works her images and references with great confidence and clarity: sometimes quietly mysterious, sometimes sparkling; varied but deeply connected.” 

"The inspiration for these poems is a series of objects, stolen trinkets, remains, scraps of film, creatures, all left behind by events that cover a sweep of time and terrain. Each one is held up for examination, or perhaps more precisely, for meditation, to reveal a story of seismic shifts in human history and the natural world.” 

You can read an interview with Joanna Lowry and the title poem from her winning pamphlet The Man Whose Brain Turned to Glass on the Mslexia website.