The Keats-Shelley Memorial Association have announced the winners of the 2025-2026 Keats-Shelley Prizes at a special awards ceremony held on 16 April 2026 at 50 Albemarle Street, the former home and office of Lord Byron\u2019s publisher, John Murray.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Pascale Petit has won the Keats-Shelley Poetry Prize for her poem, Night Canoe on Lake Sandoval.<\/em> This is the second time Pascale has won having received the award in 2020 for her poem, Indian<\/em> Paradise Flycatcher<\/em>. Pascale is also in the remarkable position of being the first poet in the history of the Keats-Shelley Poetry Prize to have both won and been highly commended in the same year. Pascale\u2019s poem, John Gould\u2019s Hummingbird House, <\/em>was submitted and was highly commended by this year\u2019s judges. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Pascale said of her win: <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2018Winning the Keats-Shelley Poetry Prize has special significance for me because Keats\u2019 \u2018Ode to a Nightingale\u2018 is the poem that made me want to write poetry when I was sixteen. When I heard the teacher read it out it was like a close friend holding out their hand to show me the way through my life. And I have followed that path through the painful wood, listening to the nightingale of nature. Thank you to the judges for choosing my poem and encouraging me with my current collection in progress.\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Pascale explained the inspiration for her poem: <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2018My winning poem \u2018Night Canoe on Lake Sandoval\u2019 was inspired by several boat or pontoon rides on oxbow lakes in the Peruvian Amazon. Lake Sandoval is a particularly beautiful lake in the pristine Tambopata National Reserve, and giant river otters live in dens in the half of the crescent not allowed to tourists. Their wavering screams are extraordinary to hear and I wanted to capture the feeling the sound gave me, at the same time my awareness of their endangered status.\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n The Keats-Shelley Essay Prize was won by Tom Bailey for his essay, Listening to William Blake<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Tom, is delighted with the success of his essay:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2018It\u2019s an absolute honour and joy to have won the Keats-Shelley Essay Prize. Blake is a poet whose work means a great deal to me, and whose lines have stayed with me ever since my mother first read them to me as a boy.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n The argument in my essay, that poems should be listened to, is hardly a radical one. But it\u2019s one that I think is especially important with Blake, whose poems come alive when read aloud \u2013 and by \u2018come alive\u2019 I suppose I mean that they become strange, difficult even, as we try to pronounce them. His rhythms are constantly taking us by surprise.\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n The Young Romantics Poetry Prize was won by Chelsea Guo for her poem, Portrait of My Mother, Lovely<\/em> and the Young Romantics Essay Prize won by Lila Abularach for her essay, Turning In and Out: John Clare\u2019s Negotiation of the Sonnet\u2019s Form.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n The theme of the Keats-Shelley Poetry Prize 2026 was chosen to mark the 200th<\/sup> anniversary of Mary Shelley\u2019s The Last Man<\/em>. Entrants were invited to submit poems on the subject of either, \u2018Dystopia\u2019 or \u2018Utopia\u2019. Entries for the Keats-Shelley Essay Prize 2026 could be on any aspect of the writing and\/or lives of the Romantics and their circles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Chair of the judges, author, journalist and critic Rupert Christiansen, said of this year\u2019s Prize winners:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cJudging this year\u2019s finalists has been a rewarding and refreshing experience in an era dogged by the threat to human creativity posed by AI, the entries all showed an unmistakeable originality of thought that no computer software could ever replicate. Pascale Petit\u2019s poem evoked both mood and landscape with rare and refined sensibility, and Tom Bailey\u2019s essay opened fresh perspectives on the genius of William Blake. They are both distinguished and worthy winners.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Joining Rupert, fellow judges for this year\u2019s poetry prizes were award-winning poet Will Kemp and Professor Deryn Rees-Jones, and for the essay prizes Professor Simon Bainbridge and Professor Sharon Ruston. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The winners of the Keats-Shelley essay and poem prizes receive \u00a31,000, and the two runners-up \u00a3500. The Young Romantics essay and poem prize winners each receive \u00a3700 and the two runners-up \u00a3300 each.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The winners are:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Keats- Shelley Poetry Prize<\/strong> \u2013 Pascale Petit \u2013 Night Canoe on Lake Sandoval<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Highly Commended<\/p>\n\n\n\n Mark Fiddes – Some seasonal adjustments<\/em> <\/p>\n\n\n\n Pascale Petit – John Gould\u2019s Hummingbird House<\/em> <\/p>\n\n\n\n Keats-Shelley Essay Prize<\/strong> \u2013 Tom Bailey – Listening to William Blake<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Highly Commended<\/p>\n\n\n\n Elizabeth King – Life Among the Ruins: Mary Wollstonecraft and Mary Shelley on Human History and Animal Futures<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Karen May – \u201cThat Colossal Wreck\u201d: La Bo\u00e9tie, Prometheus and the tyrant\u2019s downfall in Shelley\u2019s \u2018Ozymandias\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Young Romantics Poetry Prize <\/strong>\u2013 Chelsea Guo – Portrait of My Mother, Lovely<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Highly Commended<\/p>\n\n\n\n Millie Hamill – The Last Nature Reserve<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Shuyu Zheng – The Regulations of Happiness<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Young Romantics Essay Prize \u2013 <\/strong>Lila Abularach – Turning In and Out: John Clare\u2019s Negotiation of the Sonnet\u2019s Form.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Highly Commended <\/p>\n\n\n\n Ela Begum Kumcuoglu – To Imagine is to Resist: the Emotional Politics of Dystopia<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Matilda Sheehan – What is the appeal of dystopias in literature?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n The winning poems and essays and those shortlisted can be read here https:\/\/www.keats-shelley.org\/<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Keats-Shelley Memorial Association have announced the winners of the 2025-2026 Keats-Shelley Prizes at a special awards ceremony held on 16 April 2026 at 50 Albemarle Street, the former home… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6456"}],"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\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6456"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6456\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6457,"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6456\/revisions\/6457"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6456"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6456"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6456"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}