Eugene Lee-Hamilton Poetry Competition

The winner of the Eugene Lee-Hamilton Poetry Competition 2026 was Henry Allsebrook, Pembroke College, Cambridge, with their sonnet Arrhythmia

In tune, in time, in time, in tune, your drum
will thump and stamp and kick. No beat is missed
or skipped. So cherish your percussionist,
who – by and through and from its throbbing thrum,

the blushing of a briefly-frosted thumb,
the clenching and unclenching of a fist,
its rhyming wrists – reminds you: you exist,
your hands can hold that holy hymnal hum.

But my organ jams and judders, stuttering
over its cluttered cadence, tripping over
its quickening like a long-legged lamb.

Still, there, beneath the grass, a secret singing
sleeps – a subterranean supernova –
dreaming, softly: I am, I am, I am.

Violet Wan’s poem Genesis was highly commended in the Eugene Lee-Hamilton Poetry Competition 2026

The LORD God said: not good for man
To be alone . So unto Adam HE sank
Long slumber, and HE cleaved ’til flank
Unpeeled away from flank, wingspan
Of the sides unfolding to unravel
Ranks of skin. That bone enmeshed
In brocades of meat HE defleshed
And mixed with mettle and gravel.
This HE took and made no longer dead.
And Adam said: flesh of my flesh, Eve
Shall I call thee. And thusly man shall too
His father-mother leave , the LORD said,
And being cleaved from them, shall cleave
To his own wife. And Eve said: who?

The winner of the Eugene Lee-Hamilton Poetry Competition 2025 was Hannah Wei, Hartford College, Oxford with their sonnet Cyrano de Bergerac to his cousin Roxane.

It matters not if mine is not the right

to kiss your hand, or share your tears and joys;

It matters not if I was not your choice—

as moth to flame, so I am to your light.

And though it is by cover of the night

and Christian’s mouth I bear my wooing voice,

it matters not — indeed, I should rejoice

your eye was never sullied by my sight.

But since it is you love him, love him true—

Love him whose face was fair enough for five,

and let his kiss your holy lips enshrine.

Think not of me, who thinks only of you;

I live not if your love is not alive—

It matters not that it was never mine.

In addition, the judges gave a “highly commended” to Isaac Marchant, Pembroke College Cambridge,  for their Games of Six (or More).

Particles of counted type and mass,

Traject the empty, dark, expanding void,

Some truly real, some down to be destroyed.

And all so strange, assigned to their own class –

How drab! Our minds dreamed up a plan so crass,

And all the beauty of our world employed,

To tame the zoo of quarks, with beasts deployed

So we who feel, could feeling realms surpass.

Yet in such dreams, a spark of life remains.

With flavours, colours, charming slights of hand

Installed by us, who think ourselves beyond

Such silly things that mortal minds entrain.

But even there, in Nature’s promised land,

Captured are we by sentimental bond.

The winner of the Eugene Lee-Hamilton Poetry Competition 2024 was Jamie Chong, Selwyn College, Cambridge , with their sonnet the oyster.

life is water: a grain of grit comes in —
through the unfaltering current — to me
and, in each breath i exchange with the sea,
fathoms a pearl of language in its spin.
the iridescence changes in lighting:
yu, yu, yu — fish, word, rain’s cacophony
thunders through my coral sanctuary,
dislodging me into the current’s din.
the foreign turbulence carries me south
through wild, whirling words straight into the rout
where divers shuck me off from where i’d clung.
the pearly vowel spinning in my mouth
cracks into charcoal. no words can come out:
i clam shut, concealing my bitten tongue.

The winner of the Eugene Lee-Hamilton Poetry Competition 2023 was Olivia Sandhu, Oriel College, Oxford, with her sonnet Castle in the sky.

The first prize winner of the Eugene Lee-Hamilton Poetry Competition 2022 was Siddiq Islam, Oriel College, Oxford with his sonnet Colourblind.

The second prize winner of the Eugene Lee-Hamilton Poetry Competition 2022 was Cameron Nicholls-Iggulden, Oriel College, Oxford with his sonnet As I Looked Out Across a Raging Sea.

Read both sonnets here.

The winner of the Eugene Lee-Hamilton Poetry Competition 2021 was Tayiba Sulaiman, St Hilda’s College, Oxford with her sonnet, Reading.

The winner of the Eugene Lee-Hamilton Poetry Competition 2020 was Jane Cooper, New College, Oxford with her sonnet, Upon James Sadler’s Ascent from Christ Church Meadow.

The First Prize winner of the Eugene Lee-Hamilton Poetry Competition 2019 was Katherine Knight, University College, Oxford with her sonnet, Croquet, Fellows’ Garden. The Second Prize winner was Bonnie Samuyiwa, Lucy Cavendish College, Cambridge, with her sonnet, Michal’s Complaint. Read both poems here.

In 2018, the quality of entries was so high that the judges decided to award the Eugene Lee-Hamilton Prize to two winners: Dominic Leonard, Christ Church Oxford, with his sonnet The Fisher of Ham Common and Shimali de Silva, Peterhouse Cambridge, with her sonnet Stella to her Violent Lover. Read both poems here.