The Keats-Shelley Blog

Lord Byron: The Accidental Exile

Anna Camilleri explores Lord Byron's exiles for 2024's Keats-Shelley and Young Romantics Prizes

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How to Write Poetry: Will Kemp’s 16 Tips for Aspiring Poets

Will Kemp, Poetry Judge for Keats-Shelley and Young Romantics Prizes, offers writing advice for 2024's Poetry Competition

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A Brief History of Elegy

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A Brief History of Elegy: IntroductionWhat is an elegy?

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A Brief History of Elegy: Part 1Elegies Before Elegy

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A Brief History of Elegy: Part 2Elegiac Couplets

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A Brief History of Elegy: Part 3The Pastoral Elegy

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A Brief History of Elegy: Part 4The Universal Elegy

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A Brief History of Elegy: Part 5The Romantic (not romantic) Elegy

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A Brief History of Elegy: Part 6Adonais

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Keats-Shelley 200 Evaluation Report

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Keats-Shelley Poetry Prizes 2021: Readings

Watch videos of all six finalists for 2021's Keats-Shelley and Young Romantics Poetry

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Keats-Shelley Poetry List: 11 Writ in Waters

11 wonderful and weird things inspired by John Keats' epitaph

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John Keats’ Final Voyage 2.0: The Enhanced Director’s Cut (Extended Remix)

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The Keats-Shelley Prize Podcast in conversation with Mark Wallinger

The Turner Prize-winning artist discusses John Keats, his love of literature and Writ in Water

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‘Writ in Water/Writ on Water’: The Hard Life by Flann O’Brien

Keats-Shelley Prize 2021: errors, puns and John Keats' epitaph

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The Non-Catholic Cemetery in Rome: A Keats-Shelley Prize Podcast with Nicholas Stanley-Price

Historian and heritage expert Nicholas Stanley-Price on Keats' funeral, the 300 year history of the Non-Catholic Cemetery (and what to call it)

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Christina Rossetti, John Keats and the Pre-Raphaelites: A Keats-Shelley Prize Podcast with Dinah Roe

Dinah Roe on the Rossettis' Anglo-Italian heritage, Keats vs Shelley rivalries, and Christina's 'Writ in Water'

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‘Writ in Water’ poems, Dante ‘Geezer’ Rossetti and John ‘Cockney’ Keats

Dr Dinah Roe reads and discusses Rossetti's 'Writ in Water' poems on the Keats-Shelley Prize Podcast

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Young Romantics Prize Resources

Links to websites, videos, texts and podcasts for teachers and entrants to the Keats-Shelley and Young Romantic Prizes

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Writ in Water, Glass and Lemon Juice: A Keats-Shelley Prize Podcast with Adam Smyth

Adam Smyth, Professor of English Literature at Balliol College, Oxford, explores Keats' epitaph

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Writ in Water Music Playlist 3: Cry Me a River

Music to inspire poets and essayists entering 2021's Keats-Shelley and Young Romantics Prizes. This week's playlist theme: Rivers.

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A Q&A with Angus Graham-Campbell

We talk to the author of 'Writ in Water', a new BBC Radio 4 play about the last days of John Keats.

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‘On Keats’ by Percy Bysshe Shelley 'Writ in Water' Inspiration: Poem 3

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Erica Jong’s Writing Advice for Young Romantics

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Writ in Water Music Playlist 2: The Sea

Music to inspire poets and essayists entering 2021's Keats-Shelley and Young Romantics Prizes. This week's playlist theme: The Sea. Elgar, Fennesz, Debussy, Peggy Lee, Blur, John Lee Hooker and of course Jaws.

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‘The Grave of Keats’ by Oscar WildeWrit in Water Inspiration: Poem 2

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Keats-Shelley Prize 2021: Lesson Questions

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‘Writ in Water’ Music Playlist 1: ‘Writ in Water’

Music to inspire poets and essayists. This week music inspired by 'Writ in Water'. Fela Kuti, Handel, PJ Harvey, Jonny Greenwood, Ella Fitzgerald and Deep Purple.

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‘Writ in Water’ by Stella GibbonsWrit in Water Inspiration: Poem 1

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Keats-Shelley Prize Inspiration: Matthew Sweeney’s Writing Advice to Young Romantics Advice for Young Poets - from Matthew Sweeney

Matthew Sweeney, who judged the Keats-Shelley Prize for almost 20 years, offered sage advice to new generations of young poets in 2018.

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The Grave of John Keats

Burying a Protestant in nineteenth-century Rome was a dangerous business. Such was the hostility to non-Catholics that the authorities insisted on their funerals taking place at night; sometimes the mourners had to be protected by soldiers. So it was before dawn on 26th February 1821 that John Keats’s body was taken through the city. If you visit the “Non-Catholic” Cemetery today, as it is now called, since it includes many people of other religions, you won’t find Keats’s name on his gravestone.

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Odes for John Keats

Anthony Gardner celebrates on Keats-Shelley's new publication - odes written by contemporary poets to mark the bicentenary of John Keats. Now available as an E-book.

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Week 8: Keats-Shelley Synchronised Reading Group - Melancholy

2 pm GMT, 20 May - John Keats' Ode to Melancholy and Charlotte Smith

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Week 7: Keats-Shelley Synchronised Reading Group - Two Psyches

Week 7 - 2pm GMT on Wedneday 13th May: John Keats' Ode to Psyche, with a side order of ST Coleridge's Psyche

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Week 6: Keats-Shelley Synchronised Reading Group - John Keats’ Ode on Indolence

2pm GMT, 6 March - we celebrate John Keats' great May odes, beginning (no irony intended) with his Ode on Indolence

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Week 5: Keats-Shelley Synchronised Reading Group - Mary Shelley’s The Last Man

Wednesday, 29th April, 2pm GMT - Mary Shelley's The Last Man - Lionel Verney's arrival in Rome

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Week 4: Keats-Shelley Synchronised Reading Group - Songbird Special

Thursday, 23 April, 1pm GMT - join us to read John Keats' Ode to a Nightingale and/or PB Shelley's To a Skylark. To mark the announcement of the winners of 2020's Keats-Shelley Prizes on Monday 27th April.

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Keats-Shelley Podcast - Simon Barnes’ Songbirds

All four episodes of the Keats-Shelley Podcast with Simon Barnes are in one easy-to-access location

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Week 3: Keats-Shelley Synchronised Reading Group - Shelley’s Hymn to Intellectual Beauty

Week 3 - 2pm GMT, Thursday, 16 April - Shelley's Hymn to Intellectual Beauty

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Week 2: Keats-Shelley Synchronised Reading Group - Keats’ To Solitude

8th April, 12 noon GMT: we read John Keats' first published poem - the sonnet, 'O Solitude! if I must with thee dwell'

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Julian Sands joins Keats-Shelley’s ‘Per Tutti’ Synchronised Reading Group

The acclaimed actor sent this reading of Shakespeare's 44th sonnet from Los Angeles

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Week 1: Keats-Shelley Synchronised Reading Group - Shakespeare’s Sonnet 44

The Keats-Shelley Synchronised Reading Group starts 1st April, 12 noon GMT with Shakespeare's sonnet 44.

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KEATS-SHELLEY PODCAST - A CONVERSATION WITH SIMON BARNES, 2020’S KEATS-SHELLEY PRIZE CHAIR (PART 2)

Simon Barnes talks skylarks and nightingales, wonders how Keats' bird could sing and fly, and considers the threat of exinction hanging over us all

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Keats-Shelley Podcast - A Conversation with Simon Barnes, 2020’s Keats-Shelley Prize Chair (Part 1)

Simon Barnes talks Songbirds, nature, birding and considers who wrote the better nightingale: John Keats or John Clare?

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Keats-Shelley Prize Songbird Poem Of The Week 10 - John Clare’s Larks in Winter

Two larks closely observed in winter by the birder's favourite poet, John Clare

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Keats-Shelley Prize Songbird Poet Of The Week 9 - John Clare

Three closely observed nightingales by the birder's favourite poet, John Clare

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Keats-Shelley Prize Songbird Poem of the Week 8 - The Nightingale by John Keble

A nightingale flies with an Oxford Movement

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Keats-Shelley Prize Songbird Poem of the Week 7 - The Tables Turned by William Wordsworth

Are songbirds superior to poets? Is birdsong better than books? William Wordsworth wonders, lonely as a cloud, in this poem written in 1798.

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Keats-Shelley Prize Songbird Poet of the Week 6 - Emily Dickinson

Two robin-songbird poems by another of the 19th century's greatest poets. Inspiration for 2020's Keats-Shelley Prizes.

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Keats-Shelley Prize Songbird Poet of the Week 5 - Christina Rossetti

Two bird song poems by the one of the 19th century's greatest poets

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Keats-Shelley Prize Songbird Playlist

A special Spotify playlist of musical songbirds to inspire entrants to 2020's Keats-Shelley and Young Romantics Prizes

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Keats-Shelley Prize Songbird Poem of the Week 4 - The Nightingale by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

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Keats-Shelley House joins the RSPB’s Let Nature Sing Take Over

Keats-Shelley House joins the RSPB's campaign to raise awareness of extinction threats to birds across the world

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Keats-Shelley Prize Songbird Poems of the Week 3 - William Wordsworth’s Two Skylarks

Romantic poetry's first generation version of Shelley's To a Skylark. William Wordsworth wrote two poems about the (and a) songbird.

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2020’s Young Romantics Poster

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2020’s Keats-Shelley Prize Poster

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Michael Rosen’s 2019 Keats-Shelley Prize Talk

Whatever became of PB Shelley's A Poetical Essay?

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World Animal Day 2019 - John Keats’ Immortal Nightingale?

Inspired by the newly published State of Nature report, we trace the erosion of wild spaces back to John Keats' nightingale

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Keats-Shelley Prize Songbird Poem of the Week 2 - PB Shelley’s To a Skylark

The second poem 2020's Keats-Shelley Prizes are celebrating this year

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Keats-Shelley Prize Songbird Poem of the Week 1 - John Keats’ Ode to a Nightingale

One of the poems whose 200th birthday we are celebrating with 2020's Keats-Shelley Prize.

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Michael O’Neill: A Tribute by Duncan Wu

Michael O’Neill was one of the foremost editors of Shelley’s poetry and prose. Shelley is a notoriously difficult poet to edit. ‘Prometheus Unbound’ alone, with its bizarre mixture of manuscript and early printed sources, none of them in any sense final, is a snare of traps and false leads. Yet Michael’s work on that and other, equally challenging texts makes the task of editing look easy...

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Keats-Shelley Prize 2019: Byron’s Don Juan turns 200Sue Bradbury celebrates the birth of Lord Byron's epic satire

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The Prometheus ProjectA Very Short Story by Lynn Shepherd

Inspired by 2016's Poetry Prize Theme, After Frankenstein, bestselling novelist Lynn Shepherd wrote a suitably chilling story...

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LIBERTYRomantics, Radicals, Revolution

‘Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, but to be young was very heaven!’ wrote William Wordsworth as the French Revolution took fire in 1789. He was not the only poet to embrace this, the first modern rebellion championing the Rights of Man. ‘Liberty, Equality, Brotherhood’ became the watchwords of a generation which had had enough of the madness of George III, the ludicrous excesses of the Prince Regent, and the repressive dictates of both Church and State.

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