26 May 2023
This is the "Long List" of highly commended poems for The Plough Prize 2023. Congratulatons to the poets!
In alphabetical order:
| POEM | BY |
| A Beginner’s Guide to Wuthering Heights | Jeanette Burton |
| A Blue and Yellow Scarf | Margaret Eddershaw |
| A boy who blew his fingers off | Catherine Naisby |
| A Coral Forest Bleached | Jonathan Greenhause |
| A little while | Chrystabel Prathap |
| A Mum Watches Table Tennis (Commonwealth Games 2022) | Helen Kay |
| A New Evolution | Bruce Harris |
| A quiet week away | Rod Whitworth |
| After Reading Stevie Smith's Poetry | Michael Cuneo |
| An oak keeps its cool | Jane Mann |
| An Unexpected Email Received During Lockdown | Joceline Powter |
| Anxiety | Angela Pickering |
| Boat Trip | Caroline Smith |
| Book Seller | Jack Brucker |
| Buon Appetito | Ian Royce Chamberlain |
| Café, Heartlands | Adrian Blackledge |
| Canal de Nivernais | Philip Williams |
| Class of Christmas '72 | Mick Wood |
| Consider the Birds | Jock Stein |
| Doña Maria | Irina Husti-Radulet |
| Dress up routine | Rebecca Chu |
| Droplet | Paul McMahon |
| Eighty-Seven To Aldwych | Adam Elms |
| Event Horizon | Matt Hohner |
| Fable | Harriet Torr |
| Falling Into Grace | Redd Ryder |
| Fear | Mara Bergman |
| For the Poplar Trees to Keep | Katrina Lemaire |
| Fourth Wall | David Olsen |
| General Zhao addresses his Daughter | Keith Chandler |
| Gift | Caroline Smith |
| Gifts for the dying | Helen Scadding |
| Green | Jenny Mitchell |
| Habits of the Northern Gray-Haired Recluse | Jed Myers |
| Hard Light, Liverpool 2022 | Kathy Miles |
| Heart | Ewan Monaghan |
| Horse Chestnut | Philip Holland |
| I am Glad to be Your Daughter | Rachael Hill |
| I do not understand quantum physics until I see your dancing | Rosie Garland |
| In Autumn's Grip | Wendy Warwick |
| In My Sister's Arms | Marie-Louise Eyres |
| Island, in silence | Katherine Collins |
| Issam's Boat | Tessa Strickland |
| Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness | Philip Dunn |
| Just when you get yourself out of one labyrinth | Deborah Harvey |
| Leaves | Alan Buckley |
| Leaving Hastings | PR Walker |
| Lower Mamble | Michael W. Thomas |
| Market Day | Sharon Ashton |
| Medea briefs her PR Officer | Alex Toms |
| Monsieur Leonard considers mushrooms | Alex Toms |
| Moss | Mary Hastilow |
| Multiverse | Brian Kirk |
| My grandmother's recipes | Mary Mulholland |
| my sister's secret | Robin Houghton |
| Noise | David Healey |
| On Berry Head, October 2020 | Nicola Warwick |
| Outriders | John Baldwin |
| Overcliff Drive | Lesley Burt |
| Pegasus Rising | Jenny McRobert |
| Playing with Bullet Holes in the Upholstery | Paul McMahon |
| Poem in which my dad plays pool in a Spanish bar | Jeanette Burton |
| Poems from the Pandemic "We Are the Front Line. We Serve the Nation" | Dave Clinch |
| Preparing Sunday Lunch with Nan-Nan’s Ghost | Kathryn Bevis |
| Radicalise me | John Ling |
| reminder | Lucy Crispin |
| Sharp edges | Lewis Westhead |
| Shepherd | Kathy Miles |
| Sistren | Sharon Black |
| Sleepwalk to the Rana Plaza | Rod Whitworth |
| Small Mercies | Stephen Boyce |
| summit | Candy Neubert |
| Supposing I forgot | David Underdown |
| Surface Tension | Neale Condliffe |
| Swimming to America | Christopher James |
| T.J. Eckleburg | Kristen Mears |
| Talking to a dragonfly in Great Ormond Street Hospital | Jenny McRobert |
| Tennis Lesson | Imogen Wade |
| The chance of a spark | Mike Barlow |
| The Inbetweenies | Ian Nimmo-White |
| The Litter-Pickers | Frances Corkey Thompson |
| The Ministry for Loneliness | Clare Proctor |
| The orphan's pantoum | Denise O'Hagan |
| The Painter on his Way to Work | Christopher Twigg |
| The Paraplegic's Tear | Francine van den Berg |
| The Pot with a Jaguar Handle | Mark Fiddes |
| The Skeletons Threw a Party | Kate Bates |
| The Tongue of War | Ozge Lena |
| The Unexpected | Tony Lucas |
| The Unreeving | Matt Hohner |
| The Year I Painted the Humber Bridge | Paul McMahon |
| The Z Men | Stuart Pickford |
| Trinidad Weeps | John Baldwin |
| Tyrian purple | Gabriel Griffin |
| Veins | Mahvash Mohtadullah |
| Walking back from Praia da Marinha | Ruth Sharman |
| Walking in the septuagenarian worlds of men | PR Walker |
| Whaleness | Kelly Davis |
| What Became of Judy at Chase | Mara Bergman |
| With Blood As Thick As Treacle | Gaia Holmes |