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Jane Martin Poetry Prize

The National Poetry Competition

Jane Martin Poetry Prize

The Jane Martin Poetry Prize is a national poetry competition, established in 2010, in memory of Girton alumna, Jane Elizabeth Martin (1978, Classics) through the generous support of her family.

Now in its 16th year, this national prize for young poets is a key part of the College’s support for poetry. The competition is judged by experts drawn from across the literary world and academia. In 2026, the panel of judges were Sarah Howe and John Clegg.

The winner will receive a cash prize of £1000 and there will also be a second prize of £500. Both prize-winners will have an opportunity to give a reading at a celebratory event at Girton College, at which the prizes will be awarded. 

The Jane Martin Poetry Prize 2026 is now closed.

The Prize Event will be held on Thursday 26 February 2026. Entrants must be resident in the UK and between the ages of 18 and 30 on Thursday 26 February 2026. 

2026 Competition 

We are pleased to announce the winners of the Jane Martin Poetry Prize 2026.

First Prize was awarded to Will Moorfoot for his poems 'Muntjac', 'Great Grandmother Moon'.

Second Prize was awarded to Yanita Georgieva for her poems 'Long Story Short', 'Dead Last'.

The 2026 judging panel were Sarah Howe and Nick Clegg.

Sarah Howe is a Hong Kong-born poet and editor. Her first book, Loop of Jade (2015), won the T.S. Eliot Prize and the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award. Her second book, Foretokens (2025) is a PBS Choice and shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize. She is poetry editor at Chatto & Windus. 

John Clegg is a poet and bookseller. His most recent poetry collection is Aliquot (2023).

10th Anniversary Celebrations

To celebrate the 10th Anniversary of the Jane Martin Poetry Prize in the context of the Girton Poetic Tradition, Girton College is delighted to announce the publication a special anthology, including a selection of poems from eminent Girtonian poets, both past and present, as well as the winning poems and new ones from the Jane Martin Poetry Prize winners from the past decade. “Ten Years of The Jane Martin Poetry Prize: Celebrating Prize-Winning Poetry at Girton College” edited by Malcolm Guite and Grevel Lindop is available for purchase via our online shop.

The anniversary of the prize was also celebrated during Girton College’s first Festival of Poetry in May 2020, where current Members of College read a selection of the poems to be featured in the Anthology and which can be viewed on our YouTube playlist.

Malcolm Guite’s specially written poem celebrating the People’s Portraits: 

Portraits by Moonlight

We are pleased to announce that the winners for the Jane Martin Poetry Prize competition for 2025 have now been released. 

First Prize was awarded to Annabelle Fuller for her poem, 'Tillage'. 

Second Prize was awarded to Cia Mangat for her poems, 'detonator' and 'Headliners'.

Read the poems here.

Annabelle Fuller read Classics and English at Magdalen College, Oxford, where she won the Newdigate Prize and the Richard Selig Prize. At Oxford, she edited The Isis and has been published in the Oxford Review of Books.

Cia Mangat is a poet from London. Her work has been published in fourteen poems, gal-dem, Propel, and bath magg, and has been broadcast by the BBC. She loves writing about bodies, gossip, and Lady Di, and her debut pamphlet is forthcoming with The Poetry Business in 2025. 

This year’s judges were Caoilinn Hughes and Dr Kirsten Norrie. 

Caoilinn Hughes is a poet, short story writer, and novelist. Her latest novel is The Alternatives, a New York Times Editor's Choice. She is the author of The Wild Laughter, which won the Royal Society of Literature's Encore Award, and Orchid & the Wasp, which won the Collyer Bristow Prize and was longlisted for the International Dublin Literary Award. Her short stories have won the Irish Book Awards' Story of the Year, The Moth Short Story Prize, and an O.Henry Prize. She was recently Oscar Wilde Writer Fellow at Trinity College Dublin and a Cullman Center Fellow at New York Public Library.

Dr Kirsten Norrie is a poet who publishes under her Highland name, MacGillivray. She has published four books of poetry, The Last Wolf of Scotland (Pighog/Red Hen, 2013), The Nine of Diamonds: Surroial Mordantless (Bloodaxe Books, 2016), The Gaelic Garden of the Dead (Bloodaxe Books, 2019) and Ravage, An Astonishment of Fire (Bloodaxe Books, 2023). Her work has appeared in the Guardian, the TLS, the Scotsman, on BBC Radio 3 Late Junction and the Verb. She is the 2024-2025 Judith E. Wilson Poetry Fellow at the University of Cambridge.

In 2024, the judging panel was led by Abigail Parry and Bohdan Piasecki.

First prize was awarded to Luke Dunne for the poem ‘Saltwater’ (view poem - PDF). Second Prize was awarded to Neva Ensminger for the poems ‘Please Remind My Mother It's Not My Fault' and 'my sister and i in genesis'’ (view poem - PDF).

Luke Dunne is a writer from London. His poetry has been published by a number of magazines, including SHIFT and Ibbetson Street (forthcoming). A film based on his screenplay, Sweeping, debuts Summer 2024.

Neva Ensminger-Holland is a second year student at the University of Saint Andrews in Scotland. They are a two-time YoungArts award winner and an American Voices nominee in the Scholastic Art and Writing Competition. Their work appears or is forthcoming in The Interlochen Review, The Bitchin’ Kitsch, The Albion Review, Blue Marble Review, One Art, voidspace, and The YoungArts Anthology. In their free time, they enjoy wearing ripped tights in the winter, watching Gilmore Girls with their boyfriend, and hot-gluing the straps back on their platform Mary-Janes.

We are pleased to announce the winners of the 2023 Jane Martin Poetry Prize, a national poetry competition for young poets, established in 2010 in memory of Girton alumna, Jane Elizabeth Martin. 

  • First prize was awarded to Warren Mortimer for the poems ‘Forgive me, Augustine,’ and ‘When We Moved to Morecambe’ (view poem - PDF).
  • Second Prize was awarded to Olivia Tuck for the poems ‘The Obligatory Future Child Poem’ and ‘Mistress of Arts’ (view poem - PDF).

Warren Mortimer recently completed a Creative Writing PhD at Lancaster University. In 2022, he released his debut pamphlet through Green Bottle Press, Fruit Knife Autopsy. Since then, he has been published by a number of UK magazines, including The Moth, Magma, Orbis, and Stand. In 2016, he won first prize for the Lanercost Short Story Festival. Warren teaches creative writing at both BA and MA level for Lancaster university and University of Cumbria

Olivia Tuck’s work has been published by the Poetry Society and Broken Sleep, and in several print and online journals. She has been longlisted for the Rebecca Swift Foundation Women Poets’ Prize, and is an associate editor at Tears in the Fence and at Lighthouse. In 2022, she completed UEA’s MA Creative Writing – Poetry course with Distinction. Her pamphlet Things Only Borderlines Know is out now with Black Rabbit Press.

We are delighted to announce the winners of the Jane Martin Poetry Prize for 2022. First prize was awarded to Lev Crofts for the poem ‘Al-Shadhili’. Second Prize was awarded to Bea Steele for the poem ‘Curiosities’.

Lev Semyonovich is a Scottish writer and school teacher currently living in London. He has just graduated from Oxford University, St. John's College, where he read Archaeology and Anthropology. While at university he edited The Isis Magazine, was the fiction editor for the Oxford Review of Books, and his poetry, prose, and non-fiction has been published variously in The Isis Magazine, Industry Magazine, 1555 Magazine, The Mays Anthology, and The Common Ground Magazine. Since graduating he has joined the Teach First programme and works as an English teacher in a state-maintained academy in Hounslow.

Bea is an MSt student in English Literature at the University of Oxford, and she is writing her dissertation on Sentimentalism and the Scottish Enlightenment. Bea originally came from Guildford, but has spent a few years living in the Southwest of England and is returning there to complete a funded PhD. Bea has been writing poetry on and off for a long time, and considers her biggest influences to be the works of Charles Causley and John Betjeman.

We are delighted to announce the winners of the Jane Martin Poetry Prize for 2021. First prize was awarded to Sam Harvey for the poems ‘Paysage ὰ ce Tableau’ and ‘Texte Intégrale’. Second Prize was awarded to Louis Klee for the poems ‘Me by Louis Fratino’ and ‘Living next to the sea was like having tragedy for a neighbour’.

Sam Harvey for the last four years has lived in Edinburgh, away from his Indiana home, while studying for a degree in English at the University of St.Andrews. For the next short while, though, he is keeping an eye out for loons and reading about snow leopards on the shores of Loch Garry.

Louis Klee is an Australian writer currently studying at the University of Cambridge. His poetry has appeared in the TLS, Best Australian Poems, the Cambridge Literary Review, and the Australian Book Review.

Please see below for the recording of the event.

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