The Judges

Fiona Benson was the winner of the Michael Marks Greek Bicentennial Poetry Prize, with her portfolio Ariadne, published in the winners’ pamphlet of the same name. Her third collection Ephemeron was shortlisted for the 2022 T.S. Eliot Prize and Rathbones Folio Prize. Her second book, Vertigo & Ghost won the Forward Poetry Prize. Bright Travellers received the Seamus Heaney Prize for first collection and the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize. She lives in mid-Devon with her husband and their two daughters.

Imogen Cassels is a poet and critic. She is the author of Chesapeake, VOSS, Arcades, and Mother, beautiful things, with poems in the London Review of Books, The White Review, and the Cambridge Literary Review, amongst other places. She reviews for the Times Literary Supplement, and lives in London.

Laura Jansen is Associate Professor (Reader) in Classics & Comparative Literature at the University of Bristol. Her research explores the interplay of classical memory and modern identity in 20th and 21st century experimental artists and their dialogue with archaic and classical Greek literature and thought. Laura regularly runs international events and collaborates with emerging voices in the fields of poetry and the visual arts. Amongst her publications are three edited volumes on Anne Carson, including Anne Carson/Antiquity (Bloomsbury 2021).

Stephen Cleary has worked for the British Library since 1994 and has been a curator of drama and literature recordings since 2003. His department collects and makes accessible documentary recordings of literary readings, drama, and other non-musical performance in Britain, together with recordings of ancillary material such as interviews and discussions. Steve was Lead Curator of the British Library exhibition ‘Listen: 140 Years of Recorded Sound’, which ran from October 2017 to May 2018. He is a member of the board of the Poetry Archive.

Sir Nicholas Penny was Director of the National Gallery, London from 2008 to 2015. Other positions have included Lecturer in Art History at the University of Manchester, Keeper of the Department of Western Art at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, Clore Curator of Renaissance Painting at the National Gallery London, and Senior Curator of Sculpture and Decorative Arts at the National Gallery of Art, Washington. His books and articles  include The Materials of Sculpture, Taste and the Antique (with Francis Haskell) and Raphael (with Roger Jones).

There is a separate judging panel for this prize, information about which can be found on the Environmental Poet of the Year prize page