Poets Against Atos wins Morning Star Award for Protest in Poetry

Poets Against Atos is an online project collecting poems inspired by the distress inflicted on disabled people by ATOS, the body which conducts, on behalf of the government, disability assessments for people claiming a range of benefits and appears principally determined to do so in such a way as to add to their troubles. Many poets have contributed to it, me among others, (though I cheated by making a found poem out of quotes from various ancient medical oaths, which I was intrigued to find had a lot in common from Greece to China, and in none of them is to be found the injunction that it is any part of a doctor's job to save government money at the possible cost of his patient's health). Anyway, we now have the excellent news that, as was announced last night at the Stoke Newington Literary Festival, the Fit to Work: Poets Against Atos campaign has won the inaugural Morning Star Award for Protest in Poetry 2013. This might be the moment to note that the Morning Star, and its poetry editor Jody Porter, take more interest in poetry than just about any other British newspaper, tabloid or broadsheet. Its weekly poetry column, Well Versed, has some brilliant stuff and is well worth trying to get into.