The King’s Gold Medal for Poetry 2025

The King has approved the award of His Majesty’s Gold Medal for Poetry for the year 2025 to Michael Laskey BEM.

Michael’s first publication ‘Cloves of Garlic’ (1988), was a joint winner of The Poetry Business Pamphlet Competition, judged that year by Carol Ann Duffy. Since then, he has published six full poetry collections. ‘Thinking of Happiness’ (1991) and ‘The Tightrope Wedding’ (1999) were both Poetry Book Society Recommendations, with ‘The Tightrope Wedding’ also shortlisted for the T S Eliot Prize.

‘Permission to Breathe’ (2004) was followed by ‘The Man Alone: New & Selected Poems’ (2008), ‘Weighing the Present’ (2014) and ‘Between Ourselves’ (2022). Last month, Laskey’s ‘Collected Poems’ was published, bringing together all his published works.

On receiving the award, Michael Laskey said: “I was completely astonished and am still finding it hard to believe.  I never imagined my poems would receive such extraordinary public recognition or that my name could ever appear on the same list as some of the poets whose work I’ve looked up to and loved for years.”

The Poet Laureate, Simon Armitage, added: “Michael is an incredibly gifted poet and is highly deserving of The King’s Gold Medal for Poetry. Reading through Collected Poems, I was struck by how deceptively simple the poems are — apparently effortless, domestic, calm in voice and clear in their descriptions and observations — yet so often, in fact almost always, deeply moving, with last lines that cause an involuntary intake of breath, a wobble of the heart, or a shiver of the spine.”

Background
Born in 1944, in Lichfield in Staffordshire, Michael has lived in Suffolk for the last forty-eight years with his wife, a retired GP. He began writing poetry seriously while raising their three sons.

He has long been a champion of contemporary poetry. In 1988, he co-founded the Aldeburgh Poetry Festival, which he directed through its first decade and which soon became international in reach. He also co-edited the poetry magazine Smiths Knoll for twenty-one years. Having worked as a writing tutor with a wide range of adult groups and in schools at all levels, today he runs The Garlic Press, publishing work mainly by Suffolk poets.

In 2015, Queen Elizabeth II approved the award of the British Empire Medal (Civil Division) to Michael Laskey for services to Contemporary Poetry.

The Gold Medal for Poetry was established by King George V in 1933 and is awarded for excellence in poetry. Each year the recipient is from the United Kingdom or a Commonwealth Realm.