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The London Magazine Poetry Prize 2025
The London Magazine is the UK’s oldest literary magazine, proud to have published some of the biggest names in poetry including T. S. Eliot, Ted Hughes, Sylvia Plath and Philip Larkin. Past winners include Kathryn Bevis, Jay Gao and Isabelle Baafi.
Now, continuing that tradition, we launch our 2025 Poetry Prize. We are delighted to announce that entries will be judged by: Fiona Benson, Jason Allen-Paisant and Mai Serhan.
Established to encourage emerging literary talent, the award provides an opportunity for publication and recognition. While there is no criteria as to theme, form or style, judges are looking for resonant and accomplished work.
Poems must be previously unpublished and no longer than 40 lines. Submissions are open for international entries.
All three prize winners will appear in a print issue of The London Magazine. Prize winners will also receive cash prizes, and will be celebrated at a prize-giving event in the summer.
This year, in light of the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Gaza, all profits from the entry fees will be donated to Medical Aid for Palestinians.
Information
Entry fee: £10 per poem
Subsequent entries: £5 per poem
Student/Low Income Entry: £5 per poem
(Must be submitted with a valid university email address)
Note: There is no limit to the number of entries you can submit.
Opening date: 23rd December 2024
Closing date: 31st March 2025
First Prize: £500
Second Prize: £300
Third Prize: £200
Enter The London Magazine Poetry Prize
We are interested in a wide variety of topics and many different styles of writing. However, we do find that those who are familiar with what we publish stand a far better chance of having their submissions accepted, so we also recommend getting your hands on a copy of our print journal which can be purchased here from our shop.
Judges
Jason Allen-Paisant is a Jamaican writer and multi-award-winning poet. He is the author of two critically acclaimed books of poetry, Thinking with Trees and Self-Portrait as Othello, which won the UK’s two most prestigious poetry awards for 2023 – the Forward Prize and T.S. Eliot Prize. He is also a Professor of Critical Theory and Creative Writing at the University of Manchester and Associate Editor of Callaloo Literary Journal.
Jason is looking for ‘surprise’ in the submissions: ‘I’m a sucker for a poem that keeps me on edge – a poem that, from the outset, shows it’s taking risks, living on the knife’s edge. I love when a poem doesn’t quite know where it’s going but invites me along for the journey. Poems that already know their destination don’t interest me.’
‘I’m especially drawn to poems where the poet is clearly aware of the potential for failure – where something in the poem itself discloses that uncertainty. And yet, the thrill lies in following the poem wherever it leads, embracing the possibility of failure while knowing the rewards could be extraordinary.’
Fiona Benson lives in Devon with her husband and their two daughters. She has published three previous collections of poetry, all of which were shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize: Bright Travellers, which won the 2015 Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize and the Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry’s Prize for First Full Collection, Vertigo & Ghost, which was shortlisted for the 2019 Rathbones Folio Prize and won both the Roehampton Poetry Prize and the Forward Prize for Best Collection, and Ephemeron, which was shortlisted for the Rathbones Folio Prize and the London Hellenic Prize. Her next collection, Midden Witch will be published in May 2025 by Jonathan Cape.
Fiona says she loves poems that ‘leave the world a little altered, and the reader changed – by some new understanding, insight, or delight. So that when I crush garlic, for example, I will always crush it alongside that one poem that taught me how to chop and savour garlic, and find myself in communion with the largeness of that particular writer’s soul. I want poems that are generous with memories and stories, or brave with empathy; poems that dare to be truthful to themselves and not to what their writer feels a poem ought to be; that keep me company in the dark – either by witnessing it, or by shining a brave light.’
Mai Serhan is a Palestinian writer. She is the author of CAIRO: the undelivered letters, winner of the 2022 Center for Book Arts Poetry Chapbook Award and finalist for the 2021 Quarterly West Chapbook Award. Her poem ‘Truce’ was a winner of the 2021 Lunch Ticket Twitter Poetry Contest, and her memoir, I Can Imagine it For Us, forthcoming by AUC Press in 2025, was a finalist for the 2021 Narratively Memoir Prize.
Mai is looking for ‘big worlds in small words. Poems that pay attention while they whim. That are so emotionally resonant, they make you ache with recognition. I’m looking for spine, skin, heart, gut. For poems that feel like both knife and feather.’
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