Poetry Prize 2026

This Year's Judges

Leontia Flynn, Nick Laird and Karen Solie

Find out more about this year's judges here.

Leontia Flynn has published five collections of poetry and two pamphlets, including a translation of Catullus. She has received the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature, the Irish Times Poetry Prize and a Cholomondeley award, and has twice been nominated for the T. S. Eliot Prize. Her most recent collection, Taking Liberties, appeared in 2023 and a Selected Poems is forthcoming with Carcarnet Press. She was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2022 and is a Professor at the Seamus Heaney Centre at Queen’s University, Belfast.

Nick Laird was born in Dungannon in County Tyrone in 1975. A poet, novelist, screenwriter, critic, and former lawyer, his awards include the Betty Trask Prize, the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature, the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize, a Forward Prize, the Somerset Maugham Award, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. For many years he taught at universities in the USA including Columbia, Princeton, and NYU, and is now the Seamus Heaney Professor of Poetry at Queen’s University, Belfast.

Karen Solie is the author of six collections of poetry. Her most recent, Wellwater (Picador, 2025), won the Forward Prize for Best Collection, the Governor General's Literary Award for Poetry, is shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize, and was shortlisted for the PEN Heaney Prize. A 2023 Guggenheim Fellow, she teaches half-time for the University of St Andrews, and is this year's Shaftesbury Creative Writer-in-Residence for Victoria College at the University of Toronto.

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We are delighted to announce that entries are now being accepted for the 2026 Seamus Heaney Poetry Prize for a First Collection. The winner will be announced during the Seamus Heaney Centre’s annual Poetry Summer School, at the Award Night readings in June 2026.

About the Prize

The Seamus Heaney Poetry Prize for a First Collection is awarded to a writer whose first full collection has been published in the preceding year, by a UK or Ireland-based publisher. The winning writer receives £5,000 and is invited to read at a prestigious public event (subject to health and safety restrictions). For this they receive travel, accommodation, and relevant expenses. A Judging Panel will be appointed by the Seamus Heaney Centre to compile a shortlist of up to five books.

How to Enter

a)     Three copies of each work must be submitted with each application. These are not returnable.

b)     Each submission must include an Entry Form (This may be submitted before or after the hardcopy books are posted).

c)     Entries must be submitted in hardcopy to the Seamus Heaney Centre (address below).

d)     The Seamus Heaney Centre will acknowledge receipt of submissions by email.

e)     The deadline for entries to the 2026 Poetry Prize is Tuesday 31 March 2026.

Eligibility

a)     Entries must be the first collection by the author.

b)     Entries must have a min. 40 pages.

c)     Entries must have been published in the UK or Ireland between 1 January and 31 December 2025.

d)     Entries must be in printed book format, not that of a magazine, pamphlet, periodical, or ebook.

e)     Authors may be of any nationality, but the work must be published in the UK or Ireland.

f)      The work must be written in, or have been translated into the English language.

g)     All books must carry an ISBN.

h)     Submissions may come from publishers, who may enter an unlimited number of books.

i)      Anthologies or collections of works by more than one author are not eligible.

j)      A collection of translations by various authors is not eligible.

k)     A book by a current judge is not eligible.

l)      Members of staff, students and recent graduates at the Seamus Heaney Centre are not eligible.

The Seamus Heaney Centre

Poetry Prize 2026

First Collection Poetry Prize

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