Congratulations to Michael Laskey, who has been awarded the King’s Gold Medal for Poetry for the year 2025! The announcement was made by Buckingham Palace on 14 February.
The Gold Medal for Poetry was established by King George V in 1933 and is awarded each year for excellence in poetry based on the poet’s entire body of work.
Michael Laskey is a widely celebrated writer, teacher and promoter of 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. He lives in Suffolk where he runs The Garlic Press, publishing pamphlets mainly by Suffolk poets.
On receiving the award, Michael 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.”
Stephen Fry has described Michael Laskey as “one of England’s finest poets you’ve probably never heard of”.
Michael’s first book of poetry Cloves of Garlic (1988), was a joint winner of that year’s Poetry Business Pamphlet Competition, judged by Carol Ann Duffy. Since then, he has published six full poetry collections. Thinking of Happiness(1991) andThe Tightrope Wedding(1999) were both Poetry Book Society Recommendations, with The Tightrope Weddingalso 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). Most recently, Michael has collaborated with his son, the actor Jack Laskey, on a a unique father and son performance based on Michael’s poetry, titled Thinking of Happiness, Etc. The show premiered at Aldeburgh Jubilee Hall in September 2025.
Michael Laskey’s Collected Poems was published by Smith|Doorstop in January 2026, bringing together all his published works.