The theme of 2020’s Keats-Shelley Prize is Songbird. This marks two landmark bicentenaries in Romantic poetry. The composition 200 years ago of PB Shelley’s To a Skylark and the publication in book form of John Keats’ Ode to a Nightingale. Categories: poetry and essay. Total Prizes worth over £5000.
While these songbirds have achieved immortality through art, today’s reality is that the skylark and nightingale both face serious threat of extinction, lending grim ironies to Romanticised lines like ‘Thou wast not born for death immortal bird’ or ‘And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest.’
Our hope for this year’s prize is that we can celebrate the glory of these songbirds, while participating in the wider political and artistic efforts to bring attention to ever-escalating climate crisis.
Submit poems of up to 30 lines on the theme of ‘Songbird’, and essays up to 3,000 words on any aspect of the works or lives of the Romantics and their circles.
Entry Fee: £10
2020’s Prize Chair is Simon Barnes, award-winning sportswriter and acclaimed author of How To Be A Bad Birdwatcher and The Meaning of Birds, Epic. Judges: the poets Professor Deryn Rees-Jones and Will Kemp, and Professors Sharon Ruston and Simon Bainbridge.
Find out more here
Deadline extended to 31 January 2020