The poet laurate, Simon Armitage, has launched a new prize for environmentally themed poetry. The Laurel prize will go to the best collection of poems “with nature and the environment at their heart”, with the aim of highlighting “the challenges facing our planet”, he told the Guardian.

The Laurel will come with a first prize of £5,000, a second prize of £2,000 and a third prize of £1,000, and will run for “at least” the decade that Armitage is laureate. It will be organised by the Poetry School, which also organises the Ginkgo prize for the best single ecopoem. Armitage will donate his annual laureate’s honarium of £5,000 towards the prize money each year.

In its first year, the prize judges will consider the last five years of collections, with subsequent prizes restricted to the previous 12 months. The first prize, which will be awarded on 23 May 2020 at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park, will be judged by Armitage, nature writer Robert Macfarlane and poet Moniza Alvi.

Armitage said: “It’s come about because of the obvious environmental concerns, and in recognition of this growing body of work in poetry addressing climate change and the climate crisis, sometimes directly and sometimes more indirectly. It needs more awareness around it. I also think that offering a prize might encourage more of this sort of writing.”

He said “Ted Hughes was often seen as being unfashionable for his nature writing and it was something he doggedly persevered with, to the point where he was a campaigner as well at low levels … now nature has very much come back into the centre of what poetry can, and should, be dealing with.” More details