2023 Jon Stallworthy Poetry prize Winner announced

Published on
Monday 23 January 2023
Category
Art & Humanities

Post Grad student at Exeter College Jennifer Kim, wins the coveted Jon Stallworthy Poetry Prize at the award ceremony last week.

The 2023 Jon Stallworthy Poetry Prize, worth £1000, has been awarded to Jennifer Kim (Exeter College), for her poem Trente et Quarante After Lucian Freud’s “The Big Man” (1976), painted to repay his gambling debts.

The competition was judged by the Professor of Poetry, Alice Oswald, and by Professor Bernard O'Donoghue, who commented:

"The given topic was 'Disgrace', a subject that we settled on partly because of the openness and divisibility of the word, containing the idea of grace as well as a negativing prefix which we felt builds in an inviting contradiction. Some of the most interesting entries played on this promising complexity."

Jennifer Kim's poem won out over 90+ entries submitted by Oxford's postgraduate poets. The runner-up was Paul Norris (Brasenose), and the other shortlisted poets were Eliza Browning (St Hugh's), Jordan Maly-Preuss (Merton) and Eira Elisabeth Murphy (Mansfield).

A YouTube video of the award event will shortly be available on the Wolfson College website, and later in the year the shortlisted poems will be published in the annual Jon Stallworthy Poetry Prize booklet, available to read in Oxford libraries.