{"id":5553,"date":"2024-09-24T12:01:13","date_gmt":"2024-09-24T12:01:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/?p=5553"},"modified":"2024-09-24T12:15:05","modified_gmt":"2024-09-24T12:15:05","slug":"announcement-the-keats-shelley-poetry-and-essay-prize-2024","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/?p=5553","title":{"rendered":"Announcement: the Keats-Shelley Poetry and Essay Prize 2024"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Keats-Shelley Prize 2024

2024\u2019s Keats-Shelley Poetry and Essay Prizes are open. The Chair of this year\u2019s
judging panel is the acclaimed writer, broadcaster and historian Tom Holland.

Poets are asked to write a new work inspired by this year\u2019s prize theme of \u201cExile\u201d,
chosen to commemorate the 200th\u00a0anniversary of Lord Byron\u2019s death in Greece.

Keats-Shelley essayists are invited to write\u00a0on any aspect of the work and\/or lives of
the Romantics and their circles.\u00a0

Keats-Shelley Prize winners receive \u00a31000. Two highly commended entrants in each
category will receive \u00a3500. All winning poems and essays will be published in\u00a0The Keats-
Shelley Review\u00a0and on the Keats-Shelley website.

Deadline for all submissions is 10am (GMT) on 31 January 2025.

More information and how to enter both prizes visit www.keats-shelley.org or click here<\/a>.

Have a question about 2024\u2019s Prize? Email: prizes@keats-shelley.org

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Keats-Shelley Prizes Return to Celebrate the Bicentenary of Byron\u2019s Death

Today the Keats-Shelley Memorial Association announcesthe launch of the Keats-Shelley Prizes.
In celebration of the bicentenary of Lord Byron\u2019s death, the theme for this year\u2019s prizes will be
\u2018Exile\u2019.

The prizes include the Keats-Shelley Prize for essays and poems and the Young Romantics Prize,
also for essays and poems, open to those aged 16 to 18yrs. Entrants are welcome from around
the world.

The Chair of this year\u2019s prizes will be acclaimed author and historian Tom Holland. Returning as
judges for this year\u2019s poetry prizes will be award-winning poet Will Kemp and Professor Deryn
Rees-Jones, and for the essay prizes Professor Simon Bainbridge and Professor Sharon Ruston.

Past poetry prize winners include the Poet Laureate Simon Armitage, Pascale Petit, Paul
McMahon and Pat Borthwick.

Entrants to the Keats-Shelley Prize and Young Romantics Prize poetry competitions should submit
a poem, contemporary in style, on the theme of \u2018Exile\u2019. The Keats-Shelley essay prize will remain
open, with entrants able to explore any aspect of the life and work of the Romantic writers.

Entrants to the Young Romantics Prize essay competition should submit an essay on one of the
following subjects: In what ways are Romantic-period writers relevant today? or \u201cMad, bad and
dangerous to know\u201d: How important is a knowledge of Byron\u2019s life to an understanding of his
poetry?

Prize submissions open on Wednesday 4 September 2024 and close at 10am (GMT) on Friday 31
January 2025, with winners announced in April 2025. The winners of the Keats-Shelley essay and
poem prizes will each receive \u00a31,000, and the two runners-up \u00a3500. The Young Romantics essay
and poem prize winners will each receive \u00a3700 and the two runners-up \u00a3300 each.

For more information and to enter the prizes from 4 September 2024 visit www.keats-shelley.org<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For Press Enquiries: Marcus Stanton: marcus@marcusstanton.co.uk | 07900 891 287 or
Catrin John: catrin_john@icloud.com | 07932 623 554<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Notes to Editors<\/p>\n\n\n\n

About the Keats-Shelley Memorial Association

The Keats-Shelley Memorial Association is a charity founded in 1903 to promote and celebrate the
work of the Romantic poets. As well as running the annual Keats-Shelley and Young Romantics poetry and essay prizes, it publishes the Keats-Shelley Review and is the custodian of the Keats-Shelley House in Rome, the house beside the Spanish Steps where John Keats died in 1821. The house has been a museum dedicated to the English Romantic poets since it opened to the public in 1906 and offers a unique outreach programme of lectures and events.

About the Keats-Shelley Prizes

Inaugurated in 1998 by the Keats-Shelley Memorial Association, the Keats-Shelley Prize encourages people of all ages to respond to the work of the Romantics with their own original poem or essay. Essayists can explore any aspects of the life or work of the Romantic writers. Poets are asked to respond to a set theme, which changes every year, however they like, provided that the poem is contemporary in style.

The Young Romantics Prize was inaugurated in 2015 to discover and promote young talent and to foster an early love and appreciation of the Romantics among young people. Running in conjunction with the Keats-Shelley Prize, it is aimed at poets and essayists aged between 16 and 18yrs. Entrants are encouraged to respond to the work of the Romantics by writing their own original poem or essay. Essayists are asked to respond to either of two set questions inspired by the life or work of the Romantic writers, and the poets to respond to a theme which changes from one year to the next.

Previous Chair of Judges have included Fiona Sampson, Simon Barnes, Michael Rosen, Liz Lochhead, Baroness Floella Benjamin, Prof. Richard Holmes, Dame Carol Ann Duffy, Salley Vickers, Colin Thubron, Dame Penelope Lively, Jack Mapanje, Janet Todd, Ann Wroe, AN Wilson, Jonathan Keates, Stephen Fry, James Fenton, Ian Gilmour, Miranda Seymour, Grevel Lindop, Tom Paulin, Claire Tomalin and Sir Andrew Motion.

For more information on the Prizes and all aspects of both the Keats-Shelley Association\u2019s work and the Keats-Shelley House visit: www.keats-shelley.org<\/p>\n\n\n\n

About the 2024 Prize Judges

Professor Simon Bainbridge

Professor Simon Bainbridge is a long-standing Judge of the essay Prizes. He teaches and writes at the University of Lancaster. His main research interest is in the relationship between the writing of the Romantic period and its historical context. He is the author of Napoleon and English Romanticism (Cambridge University Press, 1995), British Poetry and the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars (Oxford University Press, 2003) and Mountaineering and British Romanticism: The Literary Cultures of Climbing, 1770 \u2013 1836 (Oxford University Press, 2020) and the editor of Romanticism: A Sourcebook. He has published in journals such as Romanticism, Romanticism on the Net and The Byron Journal and has written essays and entries for An Oxford Companion to The Romantic Age: British Culture 1776-1832, Romanticism: An Oxford Guide, The Blackwell Companion to European Romanticism, and The Oxford Handbook of British Romanticism. He is a Trustee of the Wordsworth Trust and the Wordsworth Conference Foundation.

Tom Holland

Tom Holland is an award-winning historian and broadcaster. He has published seven works of non-fiction for adults \u2013 the latest being PAX War and Peace in Rome\u2019s Golden Age \u2013 and three aimed at young adults, the most recent, Wolf Girl, published in 2023. Holland has adapted Homer, Herodotus, Thucydides and Virgil for the BBC, and his translajon of Herodotus was published in 2013. In 2007, the Classical Associajon Prize was awarded to Holland for \u2018the individual who has done most to promote the study of the language, literature and civilisation of Ancient Greece and Rome\u2019. He has made documentaries for both the BBC and Channel 4, presented Making History for Radio 4, and is the co-presenter, with Dominic Sandbrook, of the global hit podcast, The Rest Is History. In 2024 the Sandford St Marjn Trustees\u2019 Award was presented to Tom Holland.

Will Kemp

Will Kemp is a writer of poems, short stories and novels. He is Assistant Editor at Valley Press, teaches Creative Wrijng at York University and undertakes reviews for Dream Catcher and other magazines. He has won the Keats-Shelley Prize, Cinnamon Short Story Competition, Debut Collection Award, Cinnamon Pamphlet Competition and Envoi International. He has also been well-placed in many others.

Will has had three full poetry collections published, as well as an award-winning pamphlet and 450 poems and short stories in leading journals such as: Aesthetica; The Guardian; The Interpreter\u2019s House; Iota; Magma; The North; Orbis; Other Poetry; Poetry News; The Rialto; The Shop; The Times. His debut short story collection, Surviving Larkin, was published recently by Valley Press. His fourth full poetry collection, In Another Life, will also be published shortly by Valley Press.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He regards a commendation in the Keats-Shelley Prize 2006 as the turning point in his writing career since it spurred him on during a time of self-doubt.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Professor Deryn Rees-Jones

Deryn Rees-Jones was born in Liverpool with family links to North Wales, and she later studied English at the University of Bangor, before completing a literature PhD at Birkbeck College, University of London. She is Professor of Poetry at the University of Liverpool. She won an Eric Gregory award in 1993 and The Memory Tray (Seren, 1995) was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection. Her other works are Signs Round a Dead Body (Seren, 1998), Quiver (Seren, 2004), and a groundbreaking critical study of twentieth-century women\u2019s poetry, Consorting with Angels (Bloodaxe, 2005), which was published alongside her accompanying anthology Modern Women Poets (Bloodaxe, 2005). Deryn\u2019s selected poems, What It\u2019s Like to Be Alive, was published in 2016 and is a Poetry Book Society Special Commendation.

In 2004 Deryn was named as one of Mslexia\u2019s \u2018top ten\u2019 women poets of the decade, as well as being chosen as one of the Poetry Book Society\u2019s Next Generation poets. Deryn has considerable experience as a poetry judge, including the National Poetry Competition, the T.S. Eliot Prize, the Costa Prize (Poetry) and every two years chairs the judging panel for the English Association\u2019s Michael Murphy Poetry Prize for a best first collection of poetry.

Deryn\u2019s most recent book is Paula Rego: The Art of Story, the first full-length survey of one of the most distinctive and important modern artists. Her most recent books of poems are Erato (Seren 2019) shortlisted for the T S Eliot Prize and Welsh Book of the Year, and H\u00f4tel Amour (Seren 2025). She is the editor of the award-winning Pavilion Poetry series for Liverpool University Press, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Professor Sharon Ruston

Professor Sharon Ruston is a long-standing Judge of the Prize essays. She is Chair of Romanticism in the English Literature and Creative Writing department at the University of Lancaster. Her research specialism concerns the relations between the literature, science and medicine of the Romantic period, 1780-1820. She has published The Science of Life and Death in Frankenstein (2021), Creating Romanticism (2013), Romanticism: An Introduction (2010), and Shelley and Vitality (2005). She co-edited The Collected Letters of Sir Humphry Davy for Oxford University Press (2020) and led the AHRC-funded project to transcribe all of the Davy\u2019s notebooks: https:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/davynotebooks\/.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Keats-Shelley Prize 2024 2024\u2019s Keats-Shelley Poetry and Essay Prizes are open. The Chair of this year\u2019sjudging panel is the acclaimed writer, broadcaster and historian Tom Holland. Poets are asked to… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":""},"categories":[14,2],"tags":[48],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5553"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5553"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5553\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5556,"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5553\/revisions\/5556"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5553"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5553"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5553"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}