A poetry collection about the trauma of rape has won the £5,000 Michael Marks poetry pamphlet award. Gill McEvoy’s The First Telling, published by Happenstance, was described by judges Debbie Cox, Helen Mort and Rory Waterman as “a sequence of carefully crafted poems where the silences speak volumes …  The poems could be bleak, but they are not; they move from the impossibility of finding words to tell what has happened through an exploration of the power of kindness and human bonding through wordless acceptance and support towards recovery, conveyed through colour, image and space.”

Gill McEvoy lives in Chester where she runs a poetry reading group and a workshop for practising poets. She published an earlier pamphlet with Happenstance, Uncertain Days, and has two full collections with Cinnamon Press.

The £5,000 publisher's award went to Mariscat Press. The judges said: “Several things contrived to just about gave Mariscat the edge for us, though, after hearty deliberation. This year, the press has published a greater number of pamphlets than previously, and is dedicated to growing. The quality of this year's crop is very impressive indeed, and several were on the fringes of our pamphlet shortlist. Those pamphlets are quite modestly priced but beautiful, with bespoke designs that really show off the poems to every advantage. And Mariscat is achieving all of this while maintaining a proud spirit of independence from benefactors and funding bodies.” More details