Stephen Spender Prize 2025

The Stephen Spender Prize is an annual competition for poetry in translation that celebrates the creativity of young people across the UK and Ireland – and their teachers.

The competition has a dedicated Schools Laureate Prize for teachers submitting on behalf of students and an Individual Youth Entry strand for young people entering individually, which welcome translations from all languages, as well as a special ‘Spotlight‘ strand that each year focuses on a different widely spoken language.

For 2025, the rules are simple: translate into English any poem from any language, or a Portuguese poem from the Spotlight booklet, and produce an accompanying creative response.

All teachers at schools that have entered pupils for the Schools Laureate Prize or Spotlight strand are also eligible to enter the free Teacher Laureate Prize translation competition for teachers, which welcomes translations of any poem from any language accompanied by a short written commentary. The winning teacher will receive an annual subscription to Modern Poetry in Translation magazine and a creative translation workshop for their school during the next academic year.