Announcing The Resurgence Prize with The Poetry School

The Resurgence Prize with The Poetry School is the world’s first major award for ecopoetry. With a first prize of £5,000 for the best single poem embracing ecological themes, the award ranks among the most prestigious of any single-poem competition. The 2017 judges are Ted Hughes Award winner Lavinia Greenlaw and Cambridge academic and fellow Dr Mina Gorji.

Prizes

First prize: £5,000, plus a residency at White House Farm, Great Glemham
Second prize: £2,000
Third prize: £1,000

All three winners will also be invited to a special awards ceremony at Poetry in Aldeburgh, November 3rd – 5th 2017.

“The Poetry School is delighted to be working with The Resurgence Trust on this year’s ecopoetry prize – what a great opportunity it is for poets to summon their creative thoughts to one of the key issues of our lifetime. Send us all your green thoughts in their green shades, and we look forward to sharing with you the discoveries that Lavinia and Mina unearth” – Julia Bird, Creative Director of The Poetry School.

‘In partnering with The Poetry School in its 20th anniversary year, the Prize hopes to grow and embrace more exciting poets as well as develop a relationship with the UK’s largest provider of poetry education. The School already has a commitment to ecopoetry in its existing programme and its online presence and international reach make it the perfect partner for this unique prize.’ – Peter Phelps, Resurgence Prize Founder.

Judges

Lavinia Greenlaw has published five collections of poetry. Her awards include NESTA and Wellcome fellowships given for her work on vision, memory, landscape and light. Her immersive soundwork, Audio Obscura, an exploration of arrested perception, won the 2011 Ted Hughes Award. In 2016, she wrote and directed a short film, The Sea is an Edge and an Ending, a study of the impact of dementia on our sense of time and place, drawing on Shakespeare’s Tempest. She has taught at Goldsmiths, King’s and UEA, where she was Professor of Poetry. Her other work includes Questions of Travel: William Morris in Iceland and The Importance of Music to Girls.

Mina Gorji was born in Tehran and grew up in London. She lives in Cambridge where she is a lecturer in the English Faculty, Cambridge and a fellow of Pembroke College. Her published work includes a study of John Clare, and essays on awkwardness, mess, weeds and rudeness. Her poems have appeared, among other places, in Magma, PN Review, London Magazine and The International Literary Quarterly.

How to Enter

Entry to The Resurgence Prize with The Poetry School is through Submittable only. The deadline for the 2017 competition is midnight August 17th, 2017. Please read the full eligibility rules on the prize page here. Good luck!

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