Katrina Moinet – Head Judge Q&A (Poetry 2025)
We’re delighted that the award-winning poet and writer of prose, Katrina Moinet, has agreed to be the head judge for the New Writers Poetry Competition 2025. We wanted to quiz our judge about poetry, projects and the pressure of writing competitions, and we’re grateful Katrina has taken the extra time to give us insights about her work and what she’ll be seeking from entries to our competition.
About our Head Judge – Katrina Moinet
Katrina Moinet is a prize-winning writer from Ynys Môn whose work explores language, memory, and gendered experience. Katrina has been shortlisted for Wales Book of the Year 2025 for their debut pamphlet Portrait of a Young Girl Falling. Their second Hedgehog Press prize-winning pamphlet – The Art of Silence – will be followed by a third collection in 2025, with Atomic Bohemian.
Best-of-the-Net and Pushcart nominee, Katrina is a Bournemouth Festival prize winner and the winner of two Globe Soup short fiction prizes. Katrina was longlisted in the National Poetry Competition, from over 21,000 entries. Their writing has been shortlisted in international awards including Artemesia Arts, Hungry Hill Poets-Meet-Politics prize, Globe Soup, Staunch International Book Prize, and features in Mslexia Best Women’s Short Fiction 2024.
Katrina is a workshop facilitator, volunteer festival organizer, co-edits Natur Gogledd Cymru’s Wild Words with Glyn Edwards, and hosts Blue Sky Versify open mic. They have an MA with distinction from Bangor University and belong to the Literature Wales 2025 Speak Back! cohort and Pride Roars collective. Katrina’s work appears in Mslexia, Poetry X Hunger, Poetry Wales (60th Anniversary ‘New Welsh Poets’ edition), Raw Lit, Black Iris, Ffosfforws, O Ffrwyth Y Gangen Hon (Barddas), at Venue Cymru, on the Nation.Cymru culture map, and as a visual art piece in Pontio’s ‘Representing Law’ exhibition.
Poetry Wales named Katrina ‘one to watch’ in 2025.
@KMoinetwrites | katrinamoinet.com
Katrina Moinet Q&A
1. Thank you for agreeing to be the Head Judge for the New Writers Poetry Competition 2025. You’ve won or been shortlisted/longlisted for numerous writing competitions over the years. How does it feel to be the one picking the winners this time around?
It’s an absolute privilege to be invited to judge for New Writers, thank you! I’m thrilled to have this opportunity to read so much talented writing and will relish discovering the burning themes driving poetry this year and which new and exciting forms poets are using to tackle these.
I’ve admired NewWriters.org.uk’s competitions for some time and respect your approach to giving a percentage of entry monies to charities like First Story, who support programmes for new writers to develop confidence in their creativity. I run community poetry workshops and have seen firsthand the transformative effect a positive learning space brings to young people’s creativity.
2. Your debut poetry pamplet, Portrait of a Young Girl Falling was won a competition with Hedgehog Press, who then published it. It has since been shortlisted for the Wales Book of the Year Award. (Massive congratulations!) How did you feel when you heard the announcement on BBC Wales?
It sounds like a cliché, but I cried. Happy tears, tears of relief. Writing happens in isolation and requires tenacity, resilience, and enormous amounts of self-belief; as a writer, you learn to cultivate all of these, but rejections will still flow in, even when you’re catching a great wave.
That a group of independent judges, acclaimed writers, awarded my pamphlet – of just 16 poems – recognition alongside two other incredible poets is an absolute thrill. When Carole Burns spoke specifically about my poem ‘Submission’ I experienced a rare moment of feeling utterly heard.
What I realise is how extremely lucky I am to have found an editor who loves my work and has given it a home. Hedgehog Press is a hive of exciting poets producing incredible collections (Sam Zanto and Kelly Davis to name a couple). I am forever grateful to Mark for inviting me to be the first in his gorgeous Crimson Spine series. I never imagined such an amazing journey for my beautiful debut pamphlet!
3. I first “met” you many moons ago in the Facebook group run by our friends at Globe Soup, and you won their 2021 Short Story Competition. How much extra confidence did that competition win give you as a writer, or were you already confident in your ability?
Writing was woven into my life for many years before I “found” creative writing. I’ve always loved languages, studied at Uni, abroad, read widely, and discussed books passionately with friends but never saw myself as a writer. Then Covid hit. I was furloughed in my forties, at a time many people were taking stock of their lives and choosing new paths. I guess what I’m saying is every writer has that “Day 1” when they realise the enjoyment of writing is so great they want to take it further.
Joining Globe Soup opened a door to an entire community sharing writing challenges, struggles, and successes together. I’m incredibly indebted to Globe Soup for the many lifelong writer friendships made! It gave me the best possible start to my writing journey. Encouragement from this community did stimulate a confidence to share work with strangers, which is the first big hurdle in submitting work to competitions or editors. Entering competitions regularly has helped me develop a happy-go-lucky outlook – a good result is a welcome bonus!
Winning the Globe Soup Short Story Prize (and their 24-hour Flash Fiction prize shortly after) gave me a huge confidence boost. It blew the box open on what was possible. Writing strong themes had felt exposing. Yet people responded with positivity, shared their lived experience. Taking risks with your writing leads to unexpected exchanges, inspires others to take the leap. This confidence to tackle hard-hitting themes transposed to my poetry.
Entering your poem in a competition can help build confidence to get more work out there. For me, a competition deadline can act as a useful driver to develop a piece that really matters to you: put aside everything else, edit hard, drill down to word level, space, line break, sounds, craft the poem into its best self. A competition gives permission to invest in a poem; hone it till you’re happy. My favourite moment is the point it’s ready… invariably five minutes to midnight, on the very last day… then pressing submit. That’s a great feeling!
4. Do you prefer writing poetry or prose, and do you find one “easier” than the other?
I believe every piece has an ideal shape to carry the words. Writers, like artists or sculptors, work the form until a shape reveals itself. I enjoy writing where form and content speak to each other; this happens often in poetry which plays with perspective, where words sit on the page, white space, how the piece pushes against the margins. Prose, particularly flash fiction, can also deliver interesting form.
If any of it was easy, I doubt I’d find it so enthralling! The interesting part, as with life, is the journey. That said, with so much turmoil in today’s world I’m finding poems arrive more frequently, more urgently.
5. And how many times would you tend to revise a poem before you are ready to submit it to a competition or publication?
I have a terrible habit of revisiting poems I believe to be finished and can find myself endlessly editing. But, as someone who enjoys working to a deadline, entering competitions focuses my mind, and allows a few careful revisions before submission. When I return to a poem, neither I nor the poem is quite the same. Life that happens in the in-between changes us both.
If I believe I’ve crafted a poem the best I can, I’ll send it. There and then. What happens afterwards is left to fate.
6. The subject matter of many of your poems is hard-hitting, to say the least (for example, Out of Harm’s Way and I May Destroy You from your debut pamphlet). Does writing about serious issues take an emotional toll on you, or do you find it cathartic in some way?
It’s cathartic, finding the right words to talk about something challenging, and can also surface unexpected emotion. I see both of these things as positive.
7. For several of your poems, you acknowledge the inspiration of another poet (for example, Gwendolyn Brooks and Kim Moore). Do you have any all-time favourite poets?
I have a list as long as my arm of favourite poets! Ada Limón, Rita Dove, Louise Glück, Anne Carson, Plath, Bernadette Mayer. And contemporary poets bring me so much joy – like Joelle Taylor, Clare Pollard, Kandace Siobhan Walker, Zoë Skoulding, Victoria Kennefick. I’d encourage anyone to explore beyond the canon of familiar names we’re introduced to in school or discover through mainstream channels. There’s a sensational poetry scene right now!
8. Also, can you recommend any poets our readers may not (yet) have come across and should check out?
Wendy Allen is an amazing poet doing exciting things in relation to embodied experience and feminist poetics. I’d recommend Liz Gibson, Pratibha Castle and my fellow short-listees Natalie Ann Holborow and Rhian Elizabeth; in the performance space don’t miss ML Walsh or Hollie McNish.
9. What is your first memory of reading or being read a poem?
I grew up in the eighties in a low-income one-parent household so there wasn’t a plethora of poetry lining any bookshelf. My earliest memory of poetry and its relationship to social justice comes from primary school. The famine in Ethiopia featured heavily in the news with emergency aid efforts like Band Aid’s ‘Feed The World/Do They Know It’s Christmas’. We were asked (aged seven) to write response poems to the song and turn them into posters. I was struck by my best friend’s memorable opening line – “Water, water everywhere and not a drop to drink” – completely unaware it was inspired by Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.
10. And, possibly related, can you remember the first time you wrote a poem of your own? If not, can you remember the first time you wrote a poem you were proud of?
I like that phrase “a poem of your own” which echoes of Virginia Woolf’s room. I put together a portfolio of five poems for my application to study a master’s at Bangor University. The poems themselves weren’t particularly accomplished, but raw and personal. It was the first time I had gathered work and placed belief in my writing. I got accepted. And so many amazing things have happened since, so perhaps those were the first poems I was proud of.
11. Do you have any advice for poets entering the New Writers Poetry Competition?
The phrase I hear a lot is “send us your best!” which I found difficult to decipher when I first started writing. Which poems are my best?
I’d say to anyone thinking of entering, send me that poem you believe in, the one you’ve put out again and again, that you know has a spark but hasn’t found traction. Send us poems that delight you, poems you feel proud or even surprised you wrote. Send poems that speak to some truth in your life. Poems that breathe your own particular humour, pain, or humanity.
12. No writer can win or place in every competition they enter. Do you have any strategies for dealing with feelings of rejection that might arise when people don’t make a shortlist or win?
There are good resources out there to help people deal with feelings of rejection. Poetry Wales did a commendable series about this, still available on their website, I believe. I have no antidote for rejection except to remember odds are it will happen.
What I will say is tenacity and resilience are worth cultivating for moments like these. I’ve had a poem do well in one competition and place nowhere in the next. A poem not being placed isn’t the litmus test for the strength of that poem. I wouldn’t revise it immediately. Rather, let it rest. Then find a way back to loving that poem. You believed in it once.
13. Are there any themes, styles or structures of poems that probably wouldn’t float your boat?
I’m open to almost every theme and style. If you’ve read my poetry, you’ll see I enjoy experimental form and exploring contemporary issues of social justice, identity, gendered experience.
14. How can you tell if a poem is “good” or effective? Does it come down to a feeling you have when reading it, an emotional response to the ideas presented, or something more mental, based on the structure and word choice?
Poetry is subjective, so what I enjoy isn’t going to float another judge’s boat. I’m interested in voice, multiplicity of meaning, musicality. Is the poet taking a risk, does the poem bring new light to something I thought I knew, am I transposed, transported, surprised? I want to normalize the word emotion. The poetry I enjoy usually does stimulate a range of emotions.
15. Finally, can you tell us anything about the project(s) you’re working on at present?
I have two more collections due out in the coming year with Hedgehog Press and Atomic Bohemian. I plan to commit a chunk of time this year to my novel work-in-progress. And in August I’m the nominated ‘Bardd Y Mis’ (Poet of the Month) for prominent Cymraeg publisher Barddas – as a second-language Welsh writer I’m delighted to receive this recognition.
In terms of performances and readings, I’m at the Hay Festival on 28th May, the Aberystwyth Poetry Festival 7th June, with the wonderful Suzanne Iuppa (plus a stellar line-up of poets all weekend – big shout out to Freya Blyth who runs this event!). And on October 4th I’m joining three sensational writers – Glyn Edwards, Ness Owen, and Briony Collins – at Gŵyl Ysgrifennu Môn / Anglesey Writing Festival. It’s a fab jampacked day of writing delights in scenic north Wales surroundings. Come join us!
Many thanks. And good luck with the Wales Book of the Year Award (the Awards Ceremony is on 17th July 2025… the same day as the deadline for our poetry competition!).