Jonathan Edwards

Jonathan Edwards (born 16 October 1979) is a Welsh poet, who was born in Newport and grew up in Crosskeys. His debut poetry collection My Family and Other Superheroes won the Costa Book Award for Poetry in 2014.

Biography

Edwards first came to prominence as the winner of the Terry Hetherington Award in 2010, before picking up prizes at both the Cardiff International Poetry Competition and the Basil Bunting Poetry Competition in 2012.

His first book, the poetry collection My Family and Other Superheroes, won a £1,000 first-place prize at the Ledbury Poetry Festival's International Competition in 2014, and the Costa Book Award for Poetry in 2014. Edwards described the collection as reflecting a sense of Welsh pop culture and its relation to broader Western culture, history, family, and the lives of ordinary people. According to coverage of the Costa Award by The Daily Telegraph, My Family and Other Superheroes saw "celebrities and fictional characters such as Sophia Loren and Evel Knievel collide with reflections on the social architecture of working class Welsh valleys."