The Poetry Society Celebrating our centenary

The Poetry Society and The Ratiu Family Foundation

Corneliu M Popescu Prize for Poetry in Translation

Recent History

In 2009 Professor Randall Couch took the winning prize of £1,500 for his translation of Gabriela Mistral's Madwomen. To read more about this, click here. The prize is awarded biennially, the next competition will not open for entries until 2011.

The Prize

Awarded biennially since 2003, the Corneliu M Popescu Prize for Poetry in Translation celebrates the best collections of poetry translated from  European languages into English. The prize is £1,500.

The award is organised by the Poetry Society and the Ratiu Family Charitable Foundation. It is named after Corneliu M Popescu who translated the work of one of Romania's leading poets, Mihai Eminescu, into English. In 1977, at the age of 19, Popescu was killed in an earthquake.

The Ratiu Foundation

The Ratiu Family Charitable Foundation was established in London in 1979 by Ion and Elisabeth Ratiu to promote and and support projects which further education and research in the culture and history of Romania. The foundation offers 100 annual grants worth £200,000 to Romanian students studying a wide range of subjects in the UK, principally for projects, postgraduate courses, conference participations, travel grants, and other short term courses including academic research. They enable talented graduates and young professionals to become a familiar with the UK and gain skills, which they can adapt and apply in Romania. The Ratiu Foundation offers annual seed funding for innovative projects, principally in Romania, which foster Romanian arts and civilisation, heritage, civil society, democracy and environmental protection.