Back in 2005 when this anthology was first published, the Margaret Reid Prize for Traditional Verse formed part of the awards for the Tom Howard Contest. Now, of course, the Margaret Reid Prize is a separate competition.

By sheer co-incidence, many of the award-winning poems in this collection focus on travel, whether to distant places or scenes close at hand, or even into the past.

In addition to the 59 winning entries from the Tom Howard Contest, I've included two of my own poems (one highly commended and the other short-listed in other competitions), my translation of "A King of the Goths" from the Spanish of Lupercio de Argensola, and some of my personal favorites from English literature including James Russell Lowell's "The Miner" (which I consider the Best Religious Poem), "The Jackdaw of Rheims" (The Best Humorous Poem). I had hoped that these splendid examples would encourage entries in both the religious and comic fields, but this has not proved to be the case. Very few such entries have been presented to the judges in subsequent contests, but those entries have usually gone on to win prizes. Second Place in the most recent Tom Howard Contest, for example, has been awarded to a religious poem, one of only seven such poems in the well over 700 entries received.