Poems by Nell Keddie, Maggie Sullivan, Susan Utting, Allison McVety, Paul Merchant, Sam Riviere, Michael Swan, Siriol Troup and others in the adult section from a National Competition; young prize-winners from Kent and Sussex ( Sophie Goodall, Sam Green, Jennifer Leach, Katy Dye, Charles Hooper, Christian Mueller annd others)

Fair's Fair, Susan Utting's third full poetry collection has been described as `joyous, heartbreaking, ramm'd with life'. In these poems dead creatures (a stuffed bird, a taxidermist's zebra) and people (a lovable, garrulous old man, a strange, moon-faced woman) come back to life. The graveyard dead join in the partying and after-hours drinking in the village pub; a lament becomes a celebration of life. Full of desires and ambitions - some fulfilled, some thwarted, from learning to read to reaching the moon, from shape-shifting to living without mirrors - poems are paired to speak to, or reflect each other. Themes and stories chain-react and echo throughout the book in Utting's trademark rich vocabulary, strong rhythms and distinctive patterns of sound. Fair's Fair continues to fulfil Adrian Mitchell's description of Susan Utting's work: `Her poems are musical, magical and have a clarity which goes straight to the heart.'

Half the Human Race includes poems from three previous collections, alongside new work reflecting and developing earlier themes of the lives of women, particularly those who are too often overlooked, unseen, hidden, or silenced - women made to feel "sometimes we take up too much room".There is loss and struggle here: the pain of miscarriage, the hopeless dreams of an exhausted hotel worker, the elective mutism of a traumatised school girl. But there is also much celebration, recognition and praise. Praise for the "Bare-Handed Women" who kept going through hardhip, shortages, the rationings of war. There's the celebratory joy of hearing, restored in the "Department of Audiology"; the realisation of how good life is in "The Woman Who Fell Over Backwards Trying to See a Bird in a Tree".There's a Miracle, a Charm, a mythological Sea Orphan; but these poems are tangibly real, about real women's lives. And as always, Susan Utting's poems are proud lovers of sound, rhythm, of the cacophony of living. As Philip Gross wrote, reviewing her work, "Utting unashamedly loves language, and language seems to love her back.".