Announcing: BGU Tennyson Poetry Award 2024

Submissions are now open

The winner of the Tennyson Poetry Award 2023 at Bishop Grosseteste University (BGU) on National Poetry Day. Andrew Pearce whose poem ‘The Statue’ impressed the judges, received high praises for its dialogue with the original Tennyson’s poem. With a high calibre of entries this year, the panel found it difficult to choose a winning poem. Read Andrew's poem here.

At the same event, The Tennyson Poetry Award 2024 was officially launched. Staff and students are invited to part and send their entries.

Inspired by Lincolnshire-born Victorian Poet Laureate, Alfred Lord Tennyson (1809-1892), the Tennyson Poetry Award asks you to submit an original poem in response to a poem by Tennyson. This year, the poem should be in answer to ‘The Kraken’ (read below). The poems doesn’t need to imitate Tennyson’s ‘The Kraken’ but may respond to it in varied ways, without limits in terms of form, style, and lyrical language. The winner/s will be announced on National Poetry 2024 (Thursday 3rd October 2024), when we will celebrate ten years of BGU’s Tennyson Poetry Award.

To submit your poem, send it as an attachment via email, including your name and contact detail, to Dr Claudia Capancioni, Programme Leader for English, by 3 June 2024: claudia.capancioni@bishopg.ac.uk

The Kraken

Below the thunders of the upper deep,
Far, far beneath in the abysmal sea,
His ancient, dreamless, uninvaded sleep
The Kraken sleepeth: faintest sunlights flee

About his shadowy sides; above him swell;
And far away into the sickly light,
From many a wondrous grot and secret cell
Unnumbered and enormous polypi
Winnow with giant arms the slumbering green.
There hath he lain for ages, and will lie
Battening upon huge sea worms in his sleep,
Until the latter fire shall heat the deep;
Then once by man and angels to be seen,
In roaring he shall rise and on the surface die.