This week on My Poetic Side we follow up on a previous article about the sale of a rare William Blake Print, we look at the winner of the PEN Heaney Award, and the first event in the new US Poet Laureates calendar.
Tyger Tyger Print Sells for Record Amount
Earlier this week the earliest colour edition of “The Tyger,” a poem by William Blake was sold at auction by the British auction house, Christie’s.
The exceptionally rare print, which we have previously looked at was given a pre-sale estimate of between £80,000 and £120,000. When the gavel came down at the end of the auction it had far exceeded that amount with a final sale price of £228,600.
After two minutes of highly competitive bidding an anonymous buyer snapped up the print.
There were also seven other prints from “Songs of Experience” included in the sale yesterday. In total these seven prints were sold for a combined total of £452,120, all of them going to different buyers.
2025 PEN Heaney Prize Winner Announced
The poet Tom Paulin has been named as the winner of the PEN Heaney Prize 2025. The winning collection “Namanlagh” which was published by Faber is the poet’s first collection in over a decade.
The prize was founded in 2024 and recognised a collection of poetry by a single author that is of
This years judges for the prize were the poets Zaffar Kunial, Sasha Dugdale and Seán Hewitt. They were joined by Chris Heaney as non-voting chair, and as a representative of the late Seamus Heaney.
The judges described the winning collection as moving and beautiful. The lines which were relatively short were not highly embellished, yet the language spoke for itself through a range of emotions including depression.
Paulin said that he was both honoured and delighted to have received the award and said that it was particularly special because it of its association with Seamus Heaney, and the beauty of his poetry, which brought a humane perspective to the Northern Ireland conflict.
Namanlagh is the poet’s 10th collection of poetry and his first in over 10 years making the award particularly special. It brings into words the poet’s lifelong interest with questions about memory, conflict, and place in a range of new ways, leading the judges to state that Paulin is one of the most politically engaged poets of the era.
This is the second year of the PEN Heaney Prize which is funded and supported by the Estate of Seamus Heaney and the Hawthornden Foundation.
Queens College to Host Arthur Sze
Named as the 25th Poet Laureate in the US, the poet Arthur Sze, who will be serving in the role from 2025 – 2026 is to open his tenure of the position with a reading that will be free to the public. The event, titled “Words Bridging Worlds: On Poetry and Translation,” will take place at Queens‘ College.
The reading will be followed by a discussion about literary translation which will take place with QC Distinguished Professor Kimiko Hahn, who in June was named the New York State poet.
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