UK Poet Laureate, Simon Armitage’s environmental poetry prize enters its sixth year, with three new judges at the helm.
The Laurel Prize, for the best collection of environmental and nature poetry, will be judged this year by poet and essayist Kathleen Jamie (Chair), poet and professor Daljit Nagra, and former Leader and Co-Leader of the Green Party of England and Wales, Caroline Lucas.
Since 2020, the Prize has furthered discourse around ecological concerns and the climate crisis, and has reached new audiences with messages of care for our planet.
Simon Armitage donates his Laureate’s Honorarium of £5,000 each year to support the project with the first prize money. This year there are four additional prizes of £1000 for four finalists.
The Laurel Prize is international, meaning any collection written in the English language will be eligible for entry.
Publishers are able to submit collections from Monday 10 February until 1 May, 2025. Only collections published between 1 June 2024 – 1 May 2025 will be eligible for entry. See the complete list of Terms and Conditions
here.
Timeline
- 10 February 2025: Submissions period open
- 1 May 2025: Submissions close
- Summer 2025: Final judging period
- Friday 19 September, 2025: Prize giving ceremony at BBC Contains Strong Language Festival, Bradford.
Kathleen Jamie 2025 Chair, Poet & Essayist
Kathleen Jamie is a poet and essayist. Her work concerns nature, travel and culture. Her poetry collections include The Overhaul, which won the 2012 Costa Poetry Prize, and The Tree House, which won the Forward prize. Her non-fiction essays are collected in the three highly regarded books Findings, Sightlines, and Surfacing, all regarded as important contributions to the ‘new nature writing’. The Bonniest Companie appeared in 2015, and won the Saltire Scottish Book of the Year Award. In 2024 she published Cairn, ‘a view from the strange here-and-now’, and The KeelieHawk, a collection of poems in Scots. Kathleen’s interests are in archaeology, nature and environment, travel and art. From 2021-24 Kathleen served as Scotland’s ‘Makar’, or National Poet.
Daljit Nagra, 2025 Judge, Poet & Professor
Daljit Nagra is Professor of Creative Writing at Brunel University of London, and Chair of the Royal Society of Literature 2021 – 2025. He is on the Council of Society of Authors, a PBS New Generation Poet, and presenter of the weekly Poetry Extra on Radio 4 Extra. Daljit has five poetry collections, all with Faber & Faber, which have won the Forward Prize for Best Individual Poem and Best First Book, the South Bank Show Decibel Award and the Cholmondeley Award, and been shortlisted for the Costa Prize and twice for the TS Eliot Prize. His latest collection indiom is a Poetry Book Society Choice. He has an MBE for Services to Literature.
Caroline Lucas 2025 Judge, Former Leader & Co-Leader, Green Party of England and Wales
Caroline Lucas was the UK’s first Green Party Member of Parliament between 2010 and 2024, and before that served for 10 years in the European Parliament. She has served as both Leader and Co-Leader of the Green Party of England and Wales. She is a writer, campaigner and keynote speaker, with a particular interest in the role of education and the arts in mobilising action on the climate and nature emergencies. She has won numerous awards for her work: in 2020 she topped the list of the BBC Radio Woman’s Hour One Planet Power List of influential activists, educators and campaigners, and in 2024 the UK’s largest sustainable business awards scheme presented her with its Lifetime Achievement Award. She is Co-President of the European Movement, and a Trustee of the Towner Art Gallery in Eastbourne. Her latest book, a Sunday Times bestseller, is Another England: How to Reclaim our National Story.