Winnners of Sheffield Hallam University’s poetry competition were announced at the UniVerse awards event last night. UniVerse, which is now in its sixth year and aims to showcase student talent, attracted entries from courses as diverse as health psychology, maths, radiotherapy and oncology and childhood studies, as well as creative writing students.
Hosted by Nuala Devlin, Director of Learning and Information Services, the event brought together a celebratory atmosphere for a range of guests including students and staff, entrants, winners and judges. Professor Philip Martin, Pro Vice Chancellor (Academic), welcomed everyone to the evening and each of the speakers was enthusiastic in their praise of the talent shown throughout the submissions.
UniVerse competition winners with their canvases
Each of the winners accepted their awards, including the sixth form students in the schools competition, and took turns to read a selection of their poems to the audience, creating a fantastic buzz and impressing all with their confidence. With judges Debjani Chatterjee, Harriet Tarlo and Nell Farrell also reading poems from their own collections, everyone present was able to enjoy different types of poetry from dramatic to humourous, poignant to historical.
Limited edition poetry postcards
Each year the learning centre produces two canvases of the winning student poems. One is displayed at Adsetts on a permanent basis, the other at Collegiate Learning Centre for a year, after which time we offer it to the poet as a keepsake. Winning poems from the last three years are available to view on Level 2 of the Adsetts Learning Centre, as well as in the Sheffield store of Waterstones who jointly sponsored the event. Limited edition postcards have been printed of the four winning student poems, and more photographs from the event will be published through twitter and facebook in the coming days. In the meantime, don’t forget to follow @ArtinAdsetts on twitter and come to the learning centres for a look at our brilliant student art and poetry work.
