The winner of this year's Northern Voices Award is Gordon Frank Phillips. It was presented to Gordon at a special event, including a Thomas Spence book launch, in Newcastle's Red House on Burns Night 25th January in the presence of the Sheriff of Newcastle, with readings from Gordon and others including Katrina Porteous, Paul Summers, Dr Keith Armstrong, Trevor Leonard, Brian Hall, Catherine Graham, Robert Lonsdale, Dominic Windram, Trevor Teasdel, Dave Alton with Ann Sessoms (pipes) and songs from Gary Miller.
Gordon Phillips has been a writer ever since he came second in a National Schools Association Poetry Competition when he lived in St Albans. He could have gone into the print trade like his father but ‘he was never any good with his hands’. He was educated at Newcastle University where he specialised in writing, memory and culture. Over the years he has written articles, book and theatre reviews for various magazines including Education Review, The Good Book Guide and Theatre. His poems and fiction have been published nationally and internationally, in particular, Australia and the USA, in school textbooks and anthologies like New Angles by Oxford University Press and Enjoying English by Macmillan. His other work has been as a librettist and lyricist, writing King Taor, a cantata for Gateshead Schools, Five Songs in Wansbeck Settings for a 20000 Voices project in Northumberland and writing some of the text as part of Five Operas, a multi-media project for schoolchildren in Essex. At the moment, he is busy writing a folksong cycle, The Square and Compass about St Mary's Island in North Tyneside and a satire The Bull and Bear Song Cycle with a North American composer. When he is not involved in creative projects he is tutoring in Creative Writing, Literature and running a Writers’ Workshop.
Other winners of the award have been William Martin, Alan C. Brown, Katrina Porteous, Catherine Graham, Gordon Hodgeon, Paul Summers and Trevor Teasdel.
More information from Northern Voices tel 0191 2529531
