The Keats-Shelley Memorial Association is thrilled to announce the winners of 2019’s Keats-Shelley Prizes. They were announced by Professor Michael Rosen on 29th April, at the annual Keats-Shelley Awards Ceremony in London.
A full report will follow.
The Keats-Shelley Memorial Association is pleased to announce the shortlists for 2019’s Keats-Shelley Prize, which marks the publication 200 years ago of the first two cantos of Lord Byron’s satirical masterpiece, Don Juan.
The Essays were judged by Professors Sharon Ruston and Simon Bainbridge, both of Lancaster University.
The Poetry Judges are Professor Deryn Rees-Jones of Liverpool University and Will Kemp, a former winner of the Keats-Shelley Poetry Prize.
Both shortlists are now in the hands of this year’s Chair of Judges, Professor Michael Rosen. Professor Rosen will announce the Winners will be announced on 29th April at our annual Awards Ceremony in London.
Please check here for updates, or follow us on Twitter: @Keats_Shelley
Michael Rosen is one of Britain’s best loved writers and performance poets for children and adults. His first degree was from Wadham College, Oxford and he went on to study for an MA and a PhD. He is currently Professor of Children’s Literature at Goldsmiths, University of London where he co-devised and teaches an MA in Children’s Literature. Michael is also a popular broadcaster and has presented BBC Radio 4’s acclaimed programme about language, “Word of Mouth” since 1998, as well as regularly presenting documentary programmes for BBC Radio 4 and BBC Radio 3, including the Sony Gold Award-winning “On Saying Goodbye”.
Michael has published in the region of 200 books for children and adults, including “The Sad Book” with Quentin Blake (Walker Books), “We’re Going on a Bear Hunt” with Helen Oxenbury (Walker Books) - made into an animated film for Channel 4 broadcast Christmas Day 2016 - and “A Great Big Cuddle” with Chris Riddell (Walker Books). His poetry for adults includes “Don’t Mention the Children” (Smokestack) and “Selected Poems” (Penguin). Non-fiction work for adults includes “Good Ideas: How to Be Your Child’s (and Your Own) Best Teacher” (John Murray), “The Disappearance of Emile Zola, Love, Literature and the Dreyfus Case” (Faber), and his memoir “So They Call You Pisher!” (Verso).
Michael writes a monthly open “letter” to the Secretary of State for Education in The Guardian where he critiques Government policy on schools from the standpoint of a parent. He visits schools, teachers’ conferences and university teacher training departments where he is in demand to give performances, workshops and keynote addresses. He also appears regularly at literary festivals all over the UK and Ireland.Michael has received several honorary awards, including degrees from the Open University, the University of Exeter, the University of London Institute of Education and the University of East London/Tavistock and Portman NHS Trust. For outstanding contribution to children’s literature he received the Eleanor Farjeon Award and was Children’s Laureate 2007-2009. In recognition of his contribution to the profile of French culture in the UK, he was made Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. Michael’s Youtube channel – “Kids’ Poems and Stories with Michael Rosen” has been viewed over 45 miilion times around the world.
Deryn Rees-Jones is Professor of Poetry at the University of Liverpool. She won an Eric Gregory award in 1993 and The Memory Tray (Seren, 1995) was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection. Her other works are Signs Round a Dead Body (Seren, 1998), Quiver (Seren, 2004), and a groundbreaking critical study of twentieth-century women’s poetry, Consorting with Angels (Bloodaxe, 2005), which was published alongside her accompanying anthology Modern Women Poets (Bloodaxe, 2005). Deryn’s selected poems, What It’s Like to Be Alive, was published in 2016 and is a Poetry Book Society Special Commendation.
In 2004 Deryn was named as one of Mslexia’s ‘top ten’ women poets of the decade, as well as being chosen as one of the Poetry Book Society’s Next Generation poets.
Deryn has considerable experience as a poetry judge, including the National Poetry Competition, the T.S. Eliot Prize, the Costa Prize (Poetry) and every two years chairs the judging panel for the English Association’s Michael Murphy Poetry Prize for a best first collection of poetry.
Deryn’s most recent book is Paula Rego: The Art of Story, the first full-length survey of one of the most distinctive and important modern artists. Her most recent books of poems are Erato (Seren 2019) shortlisted for the T S Eliot Prize and Welsh Book of the Year, and Hôtel Amour (Seren 2025). She is the editor of the award-winning Pavilion Poetry series for Liverpool University Press, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
Will Kemp is a writer of poems, short stories and novels. He is Assistant Editor at Valley Press and has taught Creative Writing at York University.
He has won the Keats-Shelley Prize, Cinnamon Short Story Competition, Debut Collection Award, Coast to Coast Prize, Cinnamon Pamphlet Competition and Envoi International. He has also been well-placed in many others.
His publications include four collections of poems and short stories, two award-winning pamphlets and 500 pieces in Aesthetica, The Guardian, Iota, Magma, The North, Orbis, Poetry News, Rialto, The Times and others.
His debut short story collection, Surviving Larkin, was published recently by Valley Press. His fourth full poetry collection, In Another Life, will also be published shortly by Valley Press.
He regards a commendation in the Keats-Shelley Prize 2006 as the turning point in his writing career since it spurred him on during a time of self-doubt.
Professor Sharon Ruston is a long-standing judge of essay prizes. She is Chair of Romanticism in the English Literature and Creative Writing department at the University of Lancaster.
Her research specialism concerns the relations between the literature, science and medicine of the Romantic period, 1780-1820. She has published The Science of Life and Death in Frankenstein (2021), Creating Romanticism (2013), Romanticism: An Introduction (2010), and Shelley and Vitality (2005). She co-edited The Collected Letters of Sir Humphry Davy for Oxford University Press (2020) and led the AHRC-funded project to transcribe all of the Davy’s notebooks: wp.lancs.ac.uk/davynotebooks/
Read a Q&A with Sharon and Professor Tim Fulford at the BARS Blog.
Visit Sharon’s profile page at the University of Lancaster here.
Professor Simon Bainbridge is a long-standing judge of the essay prizes. He teaches and writes at the University of Lancaster.
His main research interest is in the relationship between the writing of the Romantic period and its historical context. He is the author of Napoleon and English Romanticism (Cambridge University Press, 1995), British Poetry and the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars (Oxford University Press, 2003) and Mountaineering and British Romanticism: The Literary Cultures of Climbing, 1770 – 1836 (Oxford University Press, 2020) and the editor of Romanticism: A Sourcebook. He has published in journals such as Romanticism, Romanticism on the Net and The Byron Journal and has written essays and entries for An Oxford Companion to The Romantic Age: British Culture 1776-1832, Romanticism: An Oxford Guide, The Blackwell Companion to European Romanticism, and The Oxford Handbook of British Romanticism. He is a Trustee of the Wordsworth Trust and the Wordsworth Conference Foundation.
Visit Simon’s profile page at the University of Lancaster here.