The 2025 Jon Stallworthy Poetry Prize, worth £1000, has been awarded to Jordan Maly-Preuss (Merton) for her poem ‘Beginning’.
Jordan's poem won out over 60+ entries submitted by Oxford's postgraduate poets.
The competition was judged by the Professor of Poetry, A.E. Stallings, and by Professor Bernard O'Donoghue. They congratulated Jordan for the brilliance and charm of her poem: “Proceeding from chaos to creation, and from cosmic metaphysics to intimate love lyric, the poem subtly springs from both Classical and Biblical Geneses.”
Jordan commented:
"I'm very grateful to Professors Stallings and O'Donoghue for this honour, and to the organisers of the Stallworthy Prize for their ongoing nurture of postgraduate student poets. ‘Opposites’ is a theme so generative and primal, it took me swiftly to the very beginning: to Genesis, with its light and darkness, waters above and waters below, but also to Ovid’s discordia semina rerum, unquiet seeds of things, which have passed a decade planted in my mind as a complement to the Biblical creation stories. Both narratives show contrasting elemental forces being placed into their natural spheres, though where the early verses of Genesis impart promordial vastness waiting to be filled, the Metamorphoses starts with everything compressed into an intolerable mass, like a fruit about to burst. My poem 'Beginning' emerged from such a state within my own household, as our small two-bedroom terrace (complete with husband and three-year-old son) was undergoing a loft conversion, which meant that for some months we had even less space for living than usual – and then, suddenly, more: our own elemental contraction and expansion".
The runner-up was Bilal Moin (Reuben College). Riley Faulds (Worcester College), Riccardo Paccagnella (St Anne’s) and Anna Stewart-Yates (Queen’s College) were all highly commended.
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. The judges, the English Faculty and Wolfson College would all like to extend their congratulations to the winner and those shortlisted and thank all the entrants for their submissions.
