Keats-Shelley

Memorial Association    Patron HRH The Prince of Wales

 

 Registered Charity No: 212692

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Keats-Shelley Prize 2007     Tenth Anniversary

 

Sponsored by Barclays Wealth, The Cowley Foundation, Department of English, University of St Andrews.

 

“Slavery” was the theme for the poets entering the tenth annual Keats-Shelley Prize, and Keats’ Letters was A.N.Wilson’s chosen subject for his talk as Prize Chairman. This year the prizes, worth £3,000, were sponsored by Barclays Wealth, The Department of English, University of St Andrews, and The Cowley Foundation.

 

The judges invited essays on the subjects of the work or lives of John Keats, P.B.Shelley, Mary Shelley and Byron. An increased number of essays were received, although as usual the great majority of entries were poems.

 

The Awards Ceremony took place on November 1st at the Great Hall, King’s College London. The essay prizes were presented by A.N.Wilson: first prize winner was Adam Gyngell, reading English at Magdalen College, Oxford, for his essay “Ye Elemental Genii: Nature, the Elements and the Poet’s Mind in Shelley’s Poetry”; runners-up were Roderick Speer, a writer from Washington DC, for “Scotland in Byron’s Life and Poetry” and Alex Budd, reading English at Christchurch, Oxford, for “Mary and Percy Shelley and Lord Byron’s Interest in Cataclysm Theories”.

 

The poetry prizes were presented by the poet and judge John Hartley Williams. The winners, writing this year on the theme of slavery, to mark the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the slave trade, were Richard Marggraf Turley, Senior Lecturer in English at the University of Wales, and co-Founder of co-Director of the Centre for Romantic Studies, Aberystwyth (to read his poem “Elisions” click here) Katherine Lucas Anderson, an American poet published both here and the US; John Goodby, Lecturer in English at the University of Swansea; and Emily Hasler, a twenty-two year old graduate from Suffolk.

 

The winning entries are available for publication. For further information, contact Professor Nicholas Roe, University of St Andrews , Fife KY16 9AL or e-mail : nhr@st-andrews.ac.uk.

 

Photos of A.N. Wilson and John Hartley Williams with winners:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

KSMA INVITES ENTRIES FOR KEATS-SHELLEY PRIZE 2008

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Keats-Shelley Association of America, Carl H. Pforzheimer, Jr., Research Grants

 

The Keats-Shelley Association of America, Inc., awards two $2,500 research grants annually. Named in honour of the Association's most generous benefactor, the Carl H. Pforzheimer, Jr., Research Grants support the work of advanced graduate students, independent scholars, and untenured faculty. The grants provide funding for expenses related to research involving the study of British Romanticism and literary culture between 1789 and 1832, with preference given to projects involving authors and subjects covered in the Keats-Shelley Journal bibliography.

 

The awards honour the late Carl H. Pforzheimer. Jr., a past President of the Keats-Shelley Association and among its vigorous advocates. He also headed The Carl and Lily Pforzheimer Foundation, Inc., long distinguished for funding scholarships centred red on early nineteenth-century English literature.

 

For further information, applicants may write to: The Grants Administrator, Keats-Shelley Association of America, Inc., Room 226, The New York Public Library, 476 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10018-2788

 

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Prince Charles: Patron of the KSMA

 

In March 2003, it was announced that His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales had agreed to become our new Patron, following on the death of his grandmother, The Queen Mother, who was the first Patron and supported us enthusiastically for 52 years.

 

Prince Charles himself had long taken an interest in the Keats-Shelley Memorial House, and visited it again in November 2002. His support, pledged in the centenary year of the founding of the Association, has given a special impulse to our activities in the UK, Italy, and in all the countries where the young English Romantics are read and remembered.

 

 

Prince Charles signs the guestbook at the House,

with the Curator and Arch Roberto Einaudi

 

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Recent Events

 

Cheltenham 2007:

 

In October 2007, for the third year in succession the KSMA sponsored an event at Cheltenham Literary Festival.

 

Two new books about Shelley appeared last year which examined the life of the poet from alternative viewpoints, and at Cheltenham 2007 both authors joined broadcaster Sue McGregor on the platform for a lively debate.  Anne Wroe author of Being Shelley; The Poet’s Search for Himself defended the sometimes damaging effect on others of a liberated and freethinking radical by attributing his actions to  those of a genius on a spiritual journey;  she looked closely at ‘the life of the poet rather than the man’. By contrast Janet Todd  in ‘Death and the Maidens’ took a harder line portraying Shelley not as a martyr to art, but as a destroyer of the lives of many of the young impressionable women he touched, particularly those of his first wife Harriet Westbrook and Fanny Imlay, half-sister of Mary Shelley who also committed suicide.

 

For further information about the 2008 Cheltenham programme and tickets for the KSMA event please check the KSMA website or the Cheltenham Festivals website on

cheltenhamfestivals.co.uk  Events will be posted from September.

 

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Forthcoming Events

 

Lecture on Shelley and Turner:

 

The Turner Society invites KSMA Friends to the 2008 Kurt Pantzer Memorial Lecture

Professor Michael O’Neill of the University of Durham on

“The Inmost Spirit of Light: Shelley and Turner”

Wednesday 23 April 2008 6.30 pm at the Paul Mellon Centre for British Art, 16 Bedford Square, London WC1.

 

Both Shelley and Turner were fascinated by light and were concerned with the apparent dissolution of form. The lecture will show that their Romantic vision celebrates that possibility, while exploring the dark side of existence.

 

Entrance free. Wine will be served after the lecture.

 

In the Steps of Keats to the North:

 

Feisty Suzanne Grogan, 46, is a Friend of KSMA and a sufferer from the little known condition lymphoedema. She is planning to retrace the walk undertaken by John Keats and his friend Charles Brown from Lancaster to Carlisle in the summer of 1818. A life-long lover of the poetry of Keats, she is doing this to raise funds – the target is £5,000 - for the Lymphoedema Support Network and for St Margaret’s Hospice in Somerset. She is doing it in two phases, the lakes in 2008 and Scotland in 2009.

 

Please visit her website: justgiving.com/keatswalk and give generously on line. Click here for more information in her press release.

 

She says “I have read Nelson Bushnell’s account of his walk in the 30's and Carol Kyros Walker in the 70's and 80's and I feel the time is right for an update, especially as there is now a film to be made about Keats.”

 

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Keats-Shelley Prize 2008

 

 

Keats-Shelley Prize 2007

 

 

Keats-Shelley Association of America - Carl H.Pforzheimer, Jr., Research Grants

 

 

Prince Charles: Patron of the KSMA

 

 

Recent Events

 

 

Forthcoming Events

 

 

In the steps of Keats to the North: Charity sponsored walk

 

 

The Sheila Birkenhead Bursary Award

 

 

 

First-prize poet, Richard Marggraf Turley, reading his poem

 

Adam Gyngell prize winning essayist

NOW IN ITS ELEVENTH YEAR!

 

Sponsored by The Cowley Foundation, The School of English,

University of St Andrews, and The Liberal

 

 

(click here to listen or view the poem on the Telegraph website)