Poetry Society top prize explores familial discord

Eric Berlin wins prestigious award with poem Night Errand, while David Morley takes Ted Hughes prize

A poem exploring the fleeting flashes of anger we direct at our family, and the shame that it brings, has been chosen from more than 12,000 entries for one of the UK’s most prestigious poetry prizes.

Eric Berlin’s poem Night Errand was named winner of the Poetry Society’s 38th national poetry competition, a prize which each year rewards unpublished single poems from a colossal number of entries.

O, Great Northern Mall, you dwindling oracle

of upstate New York, your colossal lot

John Clare weaves English words into a nest

and in the cup he stipples rhyme, like mud,