Jack Thacker’s poem, ‘The Load’, has been judged by Sir Andrew Motion as the winner of the 2016 Charles Causley international poetry competition.
The Load by Jack Thacker (PDF, 174kB)
Jack Thacker grew up on a farm in Herefordshire. He lives in Bristol, where he is studying for a PhD on contemporary poetry and agriculture at the Universities of Bristol and Exeter. His poetry has appeared in PN Review, The Clearing and The Literateur and has been commissioned
by the Bristol and Bath Festival of Nature and the Bristol Nature Channel. He is the co-founder of the University of York-based poetry magazine Eborakon and is a board member of the Bristol Poetry Institute.
Making my final decision about the poetry prize, I wanted to balance my admiration for risk and the spirit of adventure with my liking for poems that obey their own laws of organisation. I felt ‘The Load’ managed to get the best of both these worlds, and in the process to achieve something at once clear and suggestive.
— Sir Andrew Motion, Chair of the Judges
As part of his first prize award, Jack Thacker will receive £2,000 and a week long residency at Cyprus Well, the former home of Charles Causley, in which to work on his writing and explore North Cornwall.
Further information
This year’s entries to the Charles Causley poetry competition came from a diverse range of poets, both established and emerging. There was a considerable increase in the number of international entries, and the panel of shortlisting judges – Dr Kym Martindale, Dr Luke Thompson, and Charlotte Walker, writer-in-residence at Cyprus Well, spent a day at Charles Causley’s house reading and discussing the poems before selecting a shortlist to send to Head Judge, Sir Andrew Motion.
For more information on the Charles Causley Trust please visit www.thecharlescausleytrust.org.
