Jon Stallworthy Poetry Prize winner announced

On 16 January the annual award event for this prize took place at Wolfson. Set up to honour the memory of the Wolfson Fellow and distinguished poet Professor Jon Stallworthy (1935-2014), this prize has now established itself in Oxford as the worthy equivalent for postgraduate poets to the undergraduate Newdigate prize.

The theme this year was ‘Opposites’. There were 61 entries, and the prize was won by Jordan Maly-Preuss, with Bilal Moin as runner-up and Riley Faulds (last year’s winner), Riccardo Paccagnella and Anna Stewart-Yates all highly commended.

Jordan Maly-Preuss (Merton) was awarded £1000 and a certificate for her poem ‘Beginning’. In her comments on the competition Oxford University’s Professor of Poetry A.E. Stallings celebrated “the diversity of approaches to the theme and to poetry itself”. She congratulated Jordan (who had already been shortlisted for the 2023 and 2024 prize) for the brilliance and charm of her poem: “Proceeding from chaos to creation, and from cosmic metaphysics to intimate love lyric, the poem subtly springs from both Classical and Biblical Geneses.”