Nature and eco poetry prize nominations for creative writing school
A creative writing tutor and a graduate from Manchester Met’s Manchester Writing School are both longlisted for UK Poet Laureate Simon Armitage’s global nature and eco-poetry prize, the Laurel Prize 2024.
MA creative writing graduate Ian Humphreys’ ‘moving and powerful’ second collection Tormentilis in the running for the award alongside creative writing tutor and PhD student Charlotte Shevchenko Knight’s ‘beautiful, necessary book’ of poems Food for the Dead, her debut anthology.
The Laurel Prize is awarded to the best collection of nature or environmental poetry published that year and is funded by UK Poet Laureate Simon Armitage’s Laureate’s honorarium, which he receives annually from the King, and run by the Poetry School.
Humphreys said: “The Laurel Prize is a prestigious, international award celebrating eco-poetry and nature writing so I’m honoured that Tormentil has been nominated.”
Shevchenko Knight added: “It’s wonderful that Food for the Dead has been recognised by the judges of the Laurel Prize. It’s brilliant to be in such esteemed company. I hope that through the prize more people will engage with reading not only on the genocide being waged in Ukraine, but also on the impacts of ecocide.”
Humphreys’ second poetry collection Tormentil is set in the West Yorkshire moorlands and uses nature – flowers, birds, birdsong, waterways, and the weather – to explore themes of loss including grieving for loved ones and ecological losses.
Inspired by the loss of his mother during the pandemic, Humphreys spent a lot of time walking the moors to help with grief and feelings of helplessness.
Many of the poems also celebrate family, food, healing, and recovery and was hailed by fellow University poet Dr Kim Moore as ‘a moving and powerful collection that will be read and re-read for years to come’.
Humphreys’ debut poetry collection Zebra (Nine Arches Press) was nominated for the Portico Prize and Tormentil has already won a Royal Society of Literature ‘Literature Matters’ award while in progress.
In 2023, Humphreys was appointed as Writer in Residence at the Brontë Parsonage Museum. He is the editor of Why I Write Poetry and the producer and co-editor of After Sylvia: Poems and Essays in Celebration of Sylvia Plath both published by Nine Arches Press.
Shevchenko Knight’s Food for the Dead explores Ukrainian heritage and identity, dealing with invasion, war and destruction, as well as the bonds of humanity.
It examines the war in Ukraine with a particular human focus, while investigating its brutal aggression within a wider historical and social context.
Described by author of Deaf Republic Ilya Kaminsky as a ‘beautiful, necessary book’, it has already won the Eric Gregory Award and is shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Poetry’s Felix Dennis Prize for Best First Collection 2024.
Shevchenko Knight is a poet of both British and Ukrainian heritage whose Ukrainian-born mother emigrated to the UK in the 1990s, and whose family still live near Kyiv. She is a creative writing tutor and is in her second year of a PhD at Manchester Writing School.
The prize will be judged by poets Mona Arshi, Caroline Bird, and Kwame Dawes who will select prize awards of £5,000 (first prize), £2,000 (second prize) and £1,000 (third prize), as well as a £500 award for Best First Collection UK and Best International First Collection.
Each of the winners will also receive a commission from National Landscapes to create a poem based on their favourite UK landscape.
The shortlists will be revealed on October 7 and the winners will be announced at The Laurel Prize Ceremony on October 19.
