Timothy Corsellis was a young poet and pilot killed in 1941. The Prize was set up in his name, with the support of his family, to encourage more people to read the powerful but lesser-known poets of the Second World War.

The Timothy Corsellis Poetry Prize asks you to respond to the life and/or work of a small selection of Second World War poets, including Keith Douglas, Sidney Keyes, Alun Lewis, John Jarmain, Henry Reed, Anna Akhmatova and Timothy Corsellis.

After the successful introduction of Anna Akhmatova to the roster of poets in 2016, this year we are delighted to further expand this list to include the German Jewish poet, Gertrud Kolmar.

We are also once more running our Young Critics Prize, for short essays of 500-1,500 words exploring which three poets (out of Keith Douglas, Sidney Keyes, Alun Lewis, John Jarmain, Henry Reed, Anna Akhmatova, Gertrud Kolmar or Timothy Corsellis) are most likely to be read in twenty years’ time, and why.  If you’re looking for inspiration, why not read last year’s winning essay, ‘I wandered lonely as a war-poet: Locating the individual in the unimaginable’ by Henry Wong.

The judges for both Prizes will be celebrated poet Wendy Cope; Professor Fran Brearton (for the War Poets Association), a leading authority on war poetry and Director of the Seamus Heaney Centre in Belfast; Llewela Selfridge on behalf of the Imperial War Museum in London; and Judith Palmer, Director of The Poetry Society.

For more information and to get involved

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