2025 Poetry Book Awards Winner
Napier Marten has been named the winner of the 2025 Poetry Book Awards for his dazzling debut collection Taplash Meditations.
Competition judge John Evans said: “The publication of Taplash Meditations marks the arrival of an important new voice in contemporary British poetry.”
Evans praised the collection for its depth, sincerity, and lyrical power. He wrote:
“His connection to the landscapes he inhabits is intense, visceral, and charged with feeling. These are not merely physical settings but landscapes of the soul — places that evoke a spiritual, even religious, response, as the writer and the land become one.”
The poems appear alongside striking illustrations by Johnny Bull, which Evans described as “magical, mystical, captivating, and enchanting”.
About Taplash Mediations
Taplash Meditations consists of three parts: This Rusty Nail Dawn, poems written in the USA, Vietnam, Eire and England; Rage And Chocolate, poems written in Scotland, and Let Us Drink Hibiscus, poems written in Mexico.
All the poems were written since 2018 and are the first volume Napier has published.
About Napier Marten
Napier Marten has had a deep connection with the natural world since boyhood. Born and raised in Cranborne Chase, he also has a lifelong affinity with the Moray Firth, where he has spent much of his life and received his early education. An inveterate traveller, he is drawn to wild and less trodden parts of the globe.
From an early age, he perceived wisdom beyond the rational human constructs of conditioned experience, which evolved through his upbringing on his family’s estate in South West England. This established his lifelong interest in ecology, the environment and lifecycles, providing the basis for his poetry, which frequently alludes to the importance of reconnecting to Nature.
Napier has had a varied career, including rural manager, arborist, hedge-layer, actor, helicopter pilot, and aviation and arboricultural consultant. He is an active cranio-sacral practitioner and has a small farm near Shaftesbury dedicated to local flora and fauna.
