2025 Finalists
The finalists – judged this year by the poets Kathleen Jamie (Chair), Daljit Nagra, and the former leader & co-leader, Green Party of England and Wales Caroline Lucas – is as follows (in alphabetical order):
Judith Beveridge Tintinnabulum (Giramondo Publishing)
JR Carpenter Measures of Weather (Shearsman Books)
Eliza O’Toole A Cranic of Ordinaries (Shearsman Books)
Katrina Porteous Rhizodont (Bloodaxe Books)
Carol Watts Mimic Pond (Shearsman Books)
The prize awards £5,000 for the winner of the prize and £1,000 for the other four finalists. The winner will be announced at the Laurel Prize Ceremony which is taking place on Friday 19 September at 5.30pm (BST), and will be aired via a free live-stream. This year’s ceremony is a part of BBC Contains Strong Language which takes place in Bradford from 18-21 September.
Judith Beveridge 2025 Laurel Prize Finalist
Judith Beveridge has published eight books of poetry. Her books have won major prizes including the Prime Minister’s Award for Poetry for Sun Music: New and Selected Poems. She has been awarded the Philip Hodgins Memorial Medal and the Christopher Brennan Award for excellence in Literature. She lives in Sydney.
JR Carpenter 2025 Laurel Prize Finalist
JR Carpenter is an artist, writer, researcher, and lecturer in the School of English at University of Leeds. Their work asks questions about place, displacement, climate, and colonialism, across performance, print, and digital media. Measures of Weather was The Observer’s poetry book of the month, February 2025. https://luckysoap.com
Eliza O’Toole 2025 Laurel Prize Finalist
Eliza O’Toole’s poems have appeared in Shearsman Magazine, The Rialto, Tears in the Fence, and Poetry Review. She published The Dropping of Petals (Muscaliet Press, 2021), A Cranic of Ordinaries (Shearsman, 2024) and Buying the Farm (Shearsman, 2025). She was shortlisted for the Michael Marks Environmental Poet of the Year 2023/24 for her pamphlet The Unpinning of Moths.
Katrina Porteous 2025 Laurel Prize Finalist
Katrina Porteous lives on the Northumberland coast and writes from a deep love of its human and non-human lives. She has worked on many collaborations with scientists and musicians, and has published four collections with Bloodaxe. The latest, Rhizodont (2024), was shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize.
Carol Watts 2025 Laurel Prize Finalist
Carol Watts is a poet who lives in south-east London. Her twelve collections and chapbooks include Mimic Pond, Kelptown and When Blue Light Falls (Shearsman), Occasionals and Wrack (Reality Street), Fifty-Six with George Szirtes (Arc), Sundog (Veer), and Dockfield (Equipage). She is an Emeritus Professor at the University of Sussex.
Previous Winners
2024
First Prize: John Burnside, Ruin, Blossom (Jonathan Cape)
Second Prize: Hannah Copley, Lapwing (Pavilion Poetry)
Third Prize: Robyn Maree Pickens, Tung (Otago University Press)
Best UK First Collection: Charlotte Shevchenko, Knight Food for the Dead (Jonathan Cape)
Best International First Collection: Megan Kitching, At the Point of Seeing (Otago University Press)
Judges
Mona Arshi (Chair)
Caroline Bird
Kwame Dawes
2023
First Prize: Jorie Graham, To 2040 (Carcanet Press)
Second Prize: Zaffar Kunial, England’s Green (Faber & Faber)
Third Prize: Holly Hopkins, The English Summer (Penned in The Margins)
Best UK First Collection: Yvonne Reddick, Burning Season (Bloodaxe Books)
Best International First Collection: Liza Katz Duncan, Given (Autumn House Press)
Judges
Pascale Petit (Chair)
Reeta Chakrabarti
Nick Laird
2022
First Prize: Linda France, The Knucklebone Floor (Smokestack Books)
Second Prize: Steve Ely, The European Eel (Longbarrow Press)
Third Prize: Jemma Borg, Wilder (Pavilion Books)
Best First Collection: Cynthia Miller, Honorifics (Nine Arches Press)
Best International First Collection: Rebecca Hawkes, Meat Lovers (Auckland University Press)
Judges
Glyn Maxwell (Chair)
Elena Karina Byrne
Tishani Doshi
2021
First Prize: Seán Hewitt, Tongues of Fire (Jonathan Cape)
Second Prize: Ash Davida Jane, How to Live with Mammals (Victoria University Press)
Third Prize: Sean Borodale, Inmates (Jonathan Cape)
Best First Collection: Will Burns, Country Music (Offord Road Books)
Judges
Maura Dooley (Chair)
Imtiaz Dharker
James Thornton
2020
First Prize: Pascale Petit, Mama Amazonica (Bloodaxe Books)
Second Prize: Karen McCarthy Woolf, Seasonal Disturbances (Carcanet)
Third Prize: Colin Simms, Hen Harrier (Shearsman)
Best First Collection: Matt Howard, Gall (The Rialto)
Judges
UK Poet Laureate Simon Armitage (Chair)
Moniza Alvi
Robert Macfarlane