Linda France has won this year’s £5,000 National Poetry Competition with her poem ‘Bernard and Cerinthe’. It imagines an erotic encounter in a greenhouse between a shy man and an enticing flower. Judge Jane Yeh described it as a "strange narrative" and "truly imaginative and musical … as much a pleasure to read on the page as it is on the tongue". France is based close to Hadrian’s Wall, near Hexham in Northumberland. Since 1992 she has published seven poetry collections with Bloodaxe, Smokestack and Arc, including The Gentleness of the Very Tall, The Toast of the Kit-Cat Club, book of days and You are Her. She has worked on numerous collaborations with visual artists and musicians, as well as public art projects, and also edited the 1993 Bloodaxe anthology Sixty Women Poets. Paula Bohince (‘Among Barmaids’) was second, and Josephine Abbott (‘Love on a night like this’) came third. Commended poets were Elaine Gaston, Carolyn Jess-Cooke, Debbie Lim, Danica Ognjenovic, Ken Taylor, Tom Warner, and Patricia Wooldridge. The other judges were Julia Copus and Matthew Sweeney  - and there were 12,085 submissions. You can read the winning poems here