Pascale Petit wins Keats-Shelley Poetry Prize 2025-2026
Pascale Petit presented with the Keats-Shelley Poetry Prize by Chair of Judges Rupert Christiansen. Photo: Maddmann Photography
Pascale Petit has won the £1,000 Keats-Shelley Poetry Prize 2025-2026 for 'Night Canoe on Lake Sandoval', a poem inspired by the Peruvian Amazon. The announcement of the Keats-Shelley Prizes was made by Chair of Judges Rupert Christiansen at a ceremony in London on 16 April 2026.
Pascale is the first poet in the history of the Keats-Shelley Poetry Prize to have both won and been highly commended in the same year. Her poem 'John Gould’s Hummingbird House' was highly commended by this year’s judges. Both poems will appear in Pascale Petit's tenth collection, currently in progress.
This is the second time Pascale Petit has won the Keats-Shelley Poetry Prize, having won in 2020 for 'Indian Paradise Flycatcher', a poem later published in her eighth collection Tiger Girl.
The theme of the 2025-2026 Keats-Shelley Poetry Prize was chosen to mark the 200th anniversary of Mary Shelley’s The Last Man. Entrants were invited to submit poems on the subject of either 'Dystopia' or 'Utopia'.
Chairing the judging panel was author, journalist and critic Rupert Christiansen. He was joined by Poetry Prize judges Professor Deryn Rees-Jones and the award-winning poet Will Kemp.
Chair of judges Rupert Christiansen said of this year’s winners:
'Judging this year’s finalists has been a rewarding and refreshing experience in an era dogged by the threat to human creativity posed by AI, the entries all showed an unmistakeable originality of thought that no computer software could ever replicate. Pascale Petit’s poem evoked both mood and landscape with rare and refined sensibility, and Tom Bailey’s essay opened fresh perspectives on the genius of William Blake. They are both distinguished and worthy winners.'
Pascale said of her Poetry Prize win:
‘Winning the Keats-Shelley Poetry Prize has special significance for me because Keats’ 'Ode to a Nightingale' is the poem that made me want to write poetry when I was sixteen. When I heard the teacher read it out it was like a close friend holding out their hand to show me the way through my life. And I have followed that path through the painful wood, listening to the nightingale of nature. Thank you to the judges for choosing my poem and encouraging me with my current collection in progress.’
Pascale spoke about the inspiration for her poem:
‘My winning poem ‘Night Canoe on Lake Sandoval’ was inspired by several boat or pontoon rides on oxbow lakes in the Peruvian Amazon. Lake Sandoval is a particularly beautiful lake in the pristine Tambopata National Reserve, and giant river otters live in dens in the half of the crescent not allowed to tourists. Their wavering screams are extraordinary to hear and I wanted to capture the feeling the sound gave me, at the same time my awareness of their endangered status.’
The Keats-Shelley Poetry and Essay Prizes were established in 1998 to encourage writers of all ages to respond to the work of the Romantics. Previous judges have included Carol Ann Duffy, Stephen Fry, Liz Lochhead, Richard Holmes, Dame Penelope Lively, Tom Paulin, Claire Tomalin, Jack Mapanje, Simon Barnes, Fiona Sampson and Tom Holland.
The winners of the Keats-Shelley essay and poem prizes receive £1,000, and the two runners-up £500. The Young Romantics essay and poem prize winners each receive £700 and the two runners-up £300 each. As both winner and runner up for the Poetry Prize, Pascale Petit received £1,500.
Read the 2025-26 winning and highly commended poems here.
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Pascale Petit was born in Paris, grew up in France and Wales and lives in Cornwall. She is of French, Welsh, and Indian heritage. Her ninth collection, Beast (Bloodaxe Books, 2025), was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation. Her eighth collection, Tiger Girl (Bloodaxe Books, 2020), won an RSL Literature Matters Award while in progress, and a poem from the book won the 2020 Keats-Shelley Poetry Prize, a prize which she won again with a new poem in 2026. Tiger Girl was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best Collection 2020 and for the English language poetry category shortlist for Wales Book of the Year 2021. Her seventh collection, Mama Amazonica (Bloodaxe Books, 2017), a Poetry Book Society Choice, won the RSL Ondaatje Prize 2018 and the Laurel Prize 2020, and was shortlisted for the Roehampton Poetry Prize 2018.
In 2018 Pascale Petit was appointed as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. She received a Cholmondeley Award from the Society of Authors in 2015, and was the chair of the judges for the 2015 T.S. Eliot Prize. Her novel Hummingbird Father was published by Salt in 2024.
[28 April 2026]
