2024’s Keats-Shelley Poetry and Essay Prizes are open. As in previous years. there are two competitions. The Keats-Shelley Prize, which is open to all, and the Young Romantics Prize, aimed at anyone aged between 16-18.
Poets are asked to write a new work inspired by this year’s prize theme of “Exile”, chosen to commemorate the 200th anniversary of Lord Byron’s death in Greece.
(Photo Credit: John Murray Collection, London)
Further inspiration was drawn from Byron’s Childe Harold's Pilgrimage:
What exile from himself can flee?
To zones, though more and more remote,
Still, still pursues, where’er I be,
The blight of life—the demon Thought.
Keats-Shelley essayists are invited to write on any aspect of the work and/or lives of the Romantics and their circles. Young Romantics can respond to one of two questions set by the judges.
Chairing 2024's judging panel is the acclaimed historian, writer and broadcaster Tom Holland.
(Tom Holland, 2024's Keats-Shelley Prize judge)
The author of bestsellers including Pax and Dominion, Tom also co-hosts the global hit podcast The Rest Is History with Dominic Sandbrook. His interest in Lord Byron was revealed in his very first book, 1995's The Vampyre, a novel that cast a fictionalised Lord Byron in the title role. Returning as judges for the Poetry Prize are poets Will Kemp and Professor Deryn Rees-Jones, and for the Essay Prize Professor Simon Bainbridge and Professor Sharon Ruston.
The deadline for both competitions is 31st January 2025. The winners and highly-commended runners-up will be revealed at the Keats-Shelley Awards in April.
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