Helen Dunmore FRSL was a British poet, novelist, and short story and children's writer.
The Professor of Poetry is an academic appointment at the University of Oxford. The chair was created in 1708 by an endowment from the estate of Henry Birkhead. The professorship carries an obligation to deliver an inaugural lecture; give one public lecture each term on a suitable literary subject; offer one additional event each term ; deliver the Creweian Oration at Encaenia every other year; each year, to be one of the judges for the Newdigate Prize, the Jon Stallworthy Prize, the Lord Alfred Douglas Prize and the Chancellor's English Essay Prize; every third year, to help judge the English poem on a sacred subject prize; and generally to encourage the art of poetry in the University.
The King's Gold Medal for Poetry is awarded for a book of verse published by someone in any of the Commonwealth realms. Originally the award was open only to British subjects living in the United Kingdom, but in 1985 the scope was extended to include people from the rest of the Commonwealth realms. Recommendations to the King for the award of the Medal are made by a committee of eminent scholars and authors chaired by the Poet Laureate. In recent times, the award has been announced on the birthday of William Shakespeare, 23 April. However, Don Paterson was awarded the medal alongside the 2010 New Year Honours.
The T. S. Eliot Prize for Poetry is a prize for poetry awarded by the T. S. Eliot Foundation. For many years it was awarded by the Eliots' Poetry Book Society (UK) to "the best collection of new verse in English first published in the UK or the Republic of Ireland" in any particular year. The Prize was inaugurated in 1993 in celebration of the Poetry Book Society's 40th birthday and in honour of its founding poet, T. S. Eliot. Since its inception, the prize money was donated by Eliot's widow, Mrs Valerie Eliot and more recently it has been given by the T. S. Eliot Estate.
Jo Shapcott FRSL is an English poet, editor and lecturer who has won the National Poetry Competition, the Commonwealth Poetry Prize, the Costa Book of the Year Award, a Forward Poetry Prize and the Cholmondeley Award.
Sinéad Morrissey is a Northern Irish poet. In January 2014 she won the T. S. Eliot Prize for her fifth collection Parallax and in 2017 she won the Forward Prize for Poetry for her sixth collection On Balance.
The Forward Prizes for Poetry are major British awards for poetry, presented annually at a public ceremony in London. They were founded in 1992 by William Sieghart with the aim of celebrating excellence in poetry and increasing its audience. The prizes do this by identifying and honouring talent: collections published in the UK and Ireland over the course of the previous year are eligible, as are single poems nominated by journal editors or prize organisers. Each year, works shortlisted for the prizes – plus those highly commended by the judges – are collected in the Forward Book of Poetry.
The Eric Gregory Award is a literary award given annually by the Society of Authors for a collection by British poets under the age of 30. The award was founded in 1960 by Dr. Eric Gregory to support and encourage young poets. In 2023, the seven winners were: Michael Askew; Dominic Hand; Cynthia Miller; Gboyega Odubanjo; Kandance Siobhan Walker; Phoebe Walker; and Milena Williamson.
Bloodaxe Books is a British publishing house specializing in poetry.
Michael Donaghy was a New York City poet and musician, who lived in London from 1985.
Matthew Gerard Sweeney was an Irish poet. His work has been translated into Dutch, Italian, Hebrew, Japanese, Latvian, Mexican Spanish, Romanian, Slovakian and German.
Robert Ian Duhig is a British-Irish poet. In 2014, he was chair of the judging panel for the T. S. Eliot Prize awards.
The Poetry Now Award is an annual literary prize presented for the best single volume of poetry by an Irish poet. The €5,000 award was first given in 2005 and is presented during annual Dún Laoghaire–Rathdown poetry festivals. From 2005 to 2011, it was bestowed during the Poetry Now international poetry festival which was held in March or April each year. In 2012 and 2013, the award was given during the Mountains to Sea dlr Book Festival, in September. The award is sponsored by The Irish Times newspaper.
Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature.
The Hamish Canham Prize is awarded annually by the Poetry Society to the best poem featured in the Members' Poems competition of Poetry News. Poetry News is a quarterly newsletter with features, interviews and poetry circulated to members of the Poetry Society.
Hollie McNish is a poet and author based between Cambridge and Glasgow. She has published four collections of poetry: Papers (2012), Cherry Pie (2015), Why I Ride (2015), Plum (2017) and one poetic memoir on politics and parenthood, Nobody Told Me (2016), of which the Scotsman suggested “The world needs this book...and so does every new parent” and for which she won the Ted Hughes Award for New Work in Poetry. The latter has been translated into German, French and Spanish. McNish's sixth publication - a second cross-genre collection of poetry, memoir and short stories - Slug, and other things I've been told to hate, was published in May 2021 with Hachette with a further collection Lobster, due to come out in 2024, also with Hachette. In 2016, she co-wrote a play with fellow poet Sabrina Mahfouz, Offside, relating the history of British women in football. This was published as a book in 2017.
Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature.
Founded in 1996 by a group of local poetry enthusiasts, the Ledbury Poetry Festival is now the biggest poetry festival in the UK.
Momtaza Mehri is a Somali-British poet and essayist.
Parallax is the fifth poetry collection written by Irish poet Sinéad Morrissey. First published in 2013, by Carcanet Press, the collection of poems focus on the premise of the appearance and position of an object being changed by the change in the position of the observer. In 2015, after becoming the fourth shortlisted poem written by Morrissey, it received the T. S. Eliot Prize.
