A CUMBRIAN poet has seen off competition from all over Britain to win this year’s Mirehouse Words by the Water poetry competition.

Jennifer Copley, 64, beat more than 250 other entries from all over the country with her poem, Now You’re Gone.  The former special educational needs teacher has won a number of national, regional and local awards. She is a former South Cumbria poet laureate.

Last year she published Beans in Snow, a book of fairytale poems. Her latest prize was part of the Words by the Water Festival which has been taking place this week in Keswick.

The theme was based on William Wordsworth’s reference to the “bliss of solitude” in the famous Daffodils poem. Mrs Copley entered Now You’re Gone as she felt it fitted the theme, but it was a poem she had written then put to one side.

The poem is about someone who has lost someone and they are living on their own for the first time. Because they are on their own they can hear the woman next door who also lives on her own.

Mrs Copley said: “It’s brilliant because this competition has been running for about seven or eight years and four times I have got a commended in the competition and each time I have thought I would love to win it, so this is very, very special to me.”

She will receive a cheque for £350 and her poem will be displayed on the Mirehouse Poetry Walk, at the historic Bassenthwaite house. She will read her poem at a free event at Mirehouse.

The poetry competition is sponsored by Mirehouse to celebrate its longstanding literary connections with writers such as Wordsworth, Alfred Tennyson and Robert Southey.

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