Poetry Prize Opens Publishing Door for Worcester Graduate

A University of Worcester graduate will launch her new book of poems this week, published following a prize awarded during her degree.

Cherine El-Bash has produced a collection of 20 poems under the title ‘The furthest island’, which reflects on belonging and her own heritage. She will launch it on Wednesday (October 1) with an event at The Hive from 6.30pm-8pm.

“I’m excited and happy,” said the 30-year-old, of Worcester, who graduated last year with a degree in Creative Writing and English Literature. “I think it still feels like it hasn’t happened even though I’m holding the physical thing [book]. It’s just strange because it’s something you work really hard for and it’s one of those things where, as much as you believe in yourself and think it’s going to happen, it’s such a competitive industry and it’s so hard to get your foot in any kind of door.”

Since 2018, the University’s Creative Writing course has awarded the V Press Prize for Poetry to the best collection from its Contemporary Poetry module. Top-graded students are shortlisted, and editors from publisher V Press select a winner to be published the following year. Cherine won in 2024.

Although Cherine has published individual poems before in anthologies, this is the first time a collection of her work has been put in print. The poems explore Cherine’s half Finnish half Arab background. “Major themes are belonging and otherness,” she said. “It was a way for me to work through trying to live in multiple places at the same time. There’s a big theme of being away in there and journeying and travelling - maybe the search for roots or what that looks like when that’s in different locations physically.”

The collection was largely written and edited in Cherine’s third year. She came to Worcester in 2021 for an exchange year from her degree in Finland, but she loved the Creative Writing course so much she transferred and completed her final two years at the University.

“The Creative Writing team are so good at what they do and they care a lot,” she said. “I can’t imagine having people who are more committed to having me succeed. They gave immensely educated and helpful feedback. It’s hard to teach practice in creative writing because it’s so subjective compared to other things, but you can teach it and they did it very well. They also had a knack with feedback and theory of coaxing out your own voice more. I also think the English Literature really helped with the Creative Writing side because everything that we studied and analysed brought so much more depth.”

Alongside poetry, Cherine has recently been appointed onto the Birmingham Editorial Readers Group for this year. Cherine hopes this will help in opening doors onto a publishing career.

The launch of Cherine’s collection on Wednesday is free to attend and includes readings of some of the poems and Cherine speaking about them in conversation with Dr. Ruth Stacey, Lecturer in Creative Writing at the University of Worcester. No booking is required. The collection will be available to purchase at the launch, from the V Press website or the Poetry Book Society’s website.