Holly Hopkins

Holly Hopkins is a Manchester-based poet and editor. She has published a poetry pamphlet, Soon Every House Will Have One (Smith/Doorstop, 2014), and a poetry collection, The English Summer (Penned in the Margins, 2022). The former was a Poetry Book Society Pamphlet Choice, and the latter won a Poetry Book Society Special Commendation.

Hopkins grew up in Berkshire and London, and later moved to Manchester.^[1] She has a bachelor's degree from the University of Warwick, and in 2013, was awarded an MA in Creative Writing from the Royal Holloway, University of London.^[2]

Hopkins's verse was noticed at the turn of the century, and she was selected as a Poetry Society Young Poet of the Year in 1999 and 2000. In 2011, "with the help of some initial funding from Arts Council England's Poetry & Young People Project", she helped set up the Young Poets Network arm of the society,^[3] which now focusses on supporting poets "up to the age of 25."^[4] She also won the Eric Gregory Award in 2011, and went on to have her work included in Sidekick Press, Seren Books and Bloodaxe Books anthologies,^[5] and published in The Guardian,^[6] The Telegraph and The TLS.^[1] She has performed her work at a number of festivals, including the Ledbury and the Aldeburgh poetry festivals, and at the Royal Festival Hall.^[5]

Hopkins won the 2013/14 Poetry Business International Book & Pamphlet Competition, judged by Carol Ann Duffy. Her pamphlet, titled Soon Every House Will Have One, which was published in 2014, was praised in Poetry London for a voice "so fresh it virtually sizzles". In the review, the poet Clare Pollard also noted that Hopkins's was "an almost flawless pamphlet performance", calling it "a ferociously impressive debut."^[7] The Poetry Book Society also declared it as a PBS Pamphlet Choice in 2014.^[8]

In 2015, she was an assistant editor of The Rialto, a position she now holds at The Poetry Business, and also managed the Forward Prizes for Poetry.^[8][9] In 2016, she went on to win a Hawthornden Fellowship,^[10] and was shortlisted for the inaugural Women Poets' Prize, judged by Sarah Howe, Moniza Alvi, and Fiona Sampson, and organised by the Rebecca Swift Foundation, in 2018.^[11][12]

Published in 2022, her debut collection The English Summer was shortlisted for the Forward^[13] and the Seamus Heaney^[14] first collection prizes in 2022 and 2023, respectively. Writing for the Dundee Review of the Arts, Orla Davey noted that Hopkins's manner of writing allows "a straightforward matter-of-factness to burn through her narrative".^[15] Similar to her pamphlet, The English Summer was the PBS Special Commendation for Summer 2022,^[16] and was named one of the best poetry books of 2022 in The Guardian.^[17] In 2023, Hopkins won the Third Prize at the Laurel Prize ceremony for the collection. The prize was judged by the poets Pascale Petit and Nick Laird, and the Journalist & Presenter Reeta Chakrabarti.^[18]

Hopkins won a Northern Writers' Award in 2023 for a work-in-progress, which will form her second collection.^[19] In 2025, she joined as the Awards Administrator for the Michael Marks Awards for Poetry Pamphlets.^[20]

In 2016, Hopkins received a Hawthornden Fellowship.^[10]

• Soon Every House Will Have One (Smith/Doorstop, 2014) ISBN 9781902382098
• The English Summer (Penned in the Margins, 2022) ISBN 9781908058942