The Stephen Spender Prize is an annual competition for poetry in translation, with categories for young people in the UK and Ireland as well as an Open category for adults. The rules are simple: translate into English any poem from any language – ranging from French to Farsi, from Spanish to Somali—and win publication and cash prizes!
2023 sees the launch of a new strand for schools, especially designed for teachers submitting on behalf of their students, with categories at KS1-5 and a range of supporting resources for bringing the prize into the classroom. This is accompanied by a new, free translation competition for teachers at participating schools.
Each year, the Trust also celebrates teachers who show outstanding engagement with the prize by awarding three Outstanding Teacher Commendations.
Alongside the multilingual main prize, the competition has an annually rotating Spotlight highlighting a language spoken widely in the UK, with categories at KS1-5. In 2023, the focus is Ukrainian, with entrants invited to translate one or more poems from a specially curated selection in the Ukrainian Spotlight booklet. Entries to the Spotlight can either be submitted individually by young people, or by teachers on behalf of their students.
The 2023 prize will launch in mid-May and run until mid-July, and the winners will be celebrated at a virtual awards event in the autumn. More information can be found on the prize homepage. Further links to the Schools prize and Spotlight pages will be appearing in the coming weeks.
In the meantime, teachers are invited to register their interest via the form here.