Congratulations to the Cardinal

Peterborough's leading poet, Cardinal Cox, has only gone and won the John Clare Trust Poetry Prize! He was awarded this fabulous prize on National Poetry Day, last Thursday. There's even a press release that runs:

'The Cardinal has been having his verse published in the small-press for around twenty-five years. He was the chair of Peterborough SF Club through the nineteen-nineties. He was the Poet Laureate of Peterborough for 2003 and was Poet-in-Residence at Broadway Cemetery, also in Peterborough, from 2005 until 2008. He has twice been a runner-up in the Data Dump Award for Best British Published SF Poem and this year his pamphlets of his work included on given away at the steampunk convivial The Asylum held in Lincoln.

The John Clare Trust manages the John Clare Cottage in Helpston and Cardinal Cox intends to use his year (until the final of the next competition) as a Poetry Ambassador for them.'

Congratulations to the Cardinal. The Nobel beckons...

And here's a bit of Mr Clare:

The Autumn's come again,
And the clouds descend in rain,
And the leaves are fast falling in the wood;
The Summer's voice is still,
Save the clacking of the mill
And the lowly-muttered thunder of the flood.