NEWS

The Keats-Shelley Memorial Association is pleased to announce the shortlists for 2021’s Young Romantics Poetry and Essay Prizes. You can see the three finalists in each category, and download the shortlisted poems and essays, below. Because the standard was so high, we have also asked the Judges to name essays and poems of high quality that deserve to be ‘Highly Commended’.

• Read 2021’s Keats-Shelley Prize Shortlists here.
• Read 2021’s Young Romantics Prize Shortlists here.

The shortlisted entries are now being sent to Simon Barnes, the Chair of the Judging Panel, who will make the final decision. We hope to announce the winners in early September.

• Listen to Simon Barnes talk to the Keats-Shelley Prize Podcast about nightingales and skylarks - both real and poetic.

We would like to send extra special thanks to our amazing Judging Panel – Professors Sharon Ruston and Simon Bainbridge for the essays, Professor Deryn Rees-Jones and Will Kemp for the poems. They always deserve huge credit for their expertise and hard work, but never more so than in this year of all years. You can read their thoughts below.

We also want to thank and congratulate everyone who entered 2021’s Prize. Inspired by the bicentenary of John Keats’ death, we have spent a lot of the past year wondering how poetry can help us confront, understand and if possible overcome adversity. Reading your work, whether poems or prose, gave us enormous pleasure and considerable hope during these dark times. We hope that the challenge of writing them did something similar.

• ​​​​​​​Listen to Turner Prize-winning artist Mark Wallinger talk to the Keats-Shelley Prize Podcast about his life, career and how his love of John Keats inspired his monumental art installation ‘Writ in Water’.

James Kidd