Poetry Readings: Michael Marks Awards – Ben Verinder (Environmental Poet of the Year 2024) and Professor Paul O’Prey (winner of the Publisher Award 2024 – Dare Gale press)

The BSA is delighted to host the Michael Marks Awards and its winning poets who stay at the BSA for a week as part of the programme. This year’s poets in residence are Ben Verinder, the Environmental Poet of the Year 2024, and Professor Paul O’Prey, winner of the Publisher Award 2024 (Dare- Gale press), who will give readings at the BSA Upper House.

Ben Verinder lives in rural Hertfordshire, England. He holds an MA in Writing Poetry from The Poetry School and Newcastle University. He is the 2024/5 Michael Marks Environmental Poet of the Year. His poems have been published widely, including in The Rialto, Stand, Lighthouse, The North, Black Iris, And Other Poems, and Wild Court. His debut pamphlet, Botanicals, was published by Frosted Fire in 2021 and his second, We Lost The Birds, by Nine Pens in 2023. In 2022 Ben won the Bournemouth International Writing Prize and his poems have won, been shortlisted for, or commended in, a wide variety of competitions. In 2023 he was commissioned by the Chartered Institute of Public Relations to write a poem to mark its 75th anniversary. He is the biographer of the adventurer and writer Mary Burkett.

Paul O’Prey began writing and publishing poetry after a career in academia. He studied at the universities of Oxford and Bristol. He worked at Bristol for sixteen years, then served as Vice-Chancellor of the University of Roehampton, London, for fifteen years. Paul has published four poetry pamphlets: Fleet (2021); Mappa Mundi (2023); Pilot Songs for a Phantom Island (2024); and Slow Burn (2024, translations from the Spanish of Jordi Doce, shortlisted for the Michael Marks Poetry Prize 2024). After studying at Oxford he worked as secretary to Robert Graves and went on to edit Graves’s letters, poems and essays. Other works include two anthologies, Counter-Wave: Poetry of Rescue in the First World War, and First World War: Poems from the Front. In 2016 he was awarded a CBE for services to higher education and the literary history of the First World War. Paul is the founding editor of Dare-Gale Press, which won the Michael Marks Publisher Award, 2024. Further details at www.pauloprey.com

The Michael Marks Awards for Poetry Pamphlets promote the pamphlet form and enable poets and publishers to develop and continue creating. Awarded annually, they celebrate new work with prizes for: ‘Poetry Pamphlet’ (£5,000) and ‘Publisher’ (£5,000), ‘Illustration’ (£1,000) and ‘Environmental Poet of the Year’ (£1,000). For further information on the awards, visit: https://michaelmarksawards.org/awards/2024-awards/