Mingled Voices 9

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MINGLED VOICES 9 contains the work of over fifty poets. The one hundred and twenty or so poems were selected from those entered for the International Proverse Poetry Prize in 2024, the ninth such annual international competition administered from Hong Kong.

The International Proverse Poetry Prize was jointly founded in 2016 by Dr Gillian Bickley and Dr Verner Bickley, MBE, in association with the annual international Proverse Prize for unpublished book-length fiction, non-fiction or poetry, submitted in English, which they also founded, in 2008.

Poems could be submitted on any subject or topic, chosen by each poet, or on the subject selected for 2024 by the Administrators, “Together” (interpreted in any way each writer chose). There was a free choice of interpretation, form and style.

Included in the anthology are the poems that won the first, second, and third prizes. Selection to appear in the anthology was also awarded as a prize by the judges. This year, special mention is additionally made of four of these poets.

Poems were submitted from around the world by writers with a variety of previous writing experience.

Brief biographies of all those whose work is represented in Mingled Voices 9 are included in the anthology as well as authors’ background notes on most of the poems.

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“Poetry often can have little value or importance to us in our day-to-day living until we need it. I remember hearing Auden’s ‘September 1, 1939’, about Germany’s invasion of Poland and after the attacks of September 11, 2001 (“9/11”) Auden’s words resonated deeply from an event sixty years before….

The very process of writing can be a look inward, an honest reflection of our failures and foibles, our overall humanness, our feet of clay. And in that process we might come to terms with ourselves; and, should we share this with others, we might even make a connection.

—Gary Beaumier, First-prize winner, International Proverse Poetry Prize 2023.

“This collection will take you to places that are your own and some that are not. And that, in the end, is why we keep reading.”

—Charles Lowe, PhD, Professor, Beijing Normal – Hong Kong Baptist University, Zuhai, PRC.

“The great American poet Stanley Kunitz once wrote [Collected Poems, 2000], ‘Years ago I came to the realisation that the most poignant of all lyric tensions stems from the awareness that we are living and dying at once.’ In this rich and varied anthology, I believe that many of the poems achieve the kind of lyric tension that Kunitz was striving for. I hope you will enjoy finding it here for yourself.”

—Jeff Streeter, writer and critic, formerly director of the British Council in Hong Kong, Tokyo, Japan.