56. Keats-Shelley poetry prize for Simon Armitage

A poem inspired by a vain search for icicles in the warm winter of 2008/9 has won Simon Armitage this year’s Keats-Shelley poetry prize.

The prize, which encourages the writing of poems of „modern relevance and Romantic inspiration“, set its 2010 entrants the theme of „ice“. Armitage won with „The Present“, a poem set in his home county of West Yorkshire and inspired by an episode that took place two years earlier. His daughter was ill, and Armitage went up onto the moor in search of icicles to cheer her up – but came back empty-handed.

After receiving the £1,000 award at last night’s British Academy cermony, Armitage shared his thoughts on the win. „I’m not sure if it’s possible to be a Romantic poet anymore, but more and more poets seem to be turning their eye towards nature – to the necessity of its otherness,“ he said. / Benedicte Page, Guardian 14.10

Simons Armitages preisgekröntes Gedicht wird am Sonnabend im Guardian abgedruckt.