Stephen Spender Prize 2025

We are thrilled to share that Willa (Y9) has been commended in the Stephen Spender Prize for Poetry in Translation 2025 for her English translation of Delmira Agustini’s Spanish poem Al claro de luna (Uruguay, 1924).

This prestigious competition, run by the Stephen Spender Trust in partnership with Oxford University, attracts hundreds of entries each year – making Willa’s achievement truly outstanding.

Even more impressive, Willa completed this translation at the end of Year 8, during her first year of Spanish! Earlier this year, she was also named runner-up in the Oxford Flash Fiction Competition in Spanish.

Congratulations Willa!

Read the translation in full below: 

In the light of the moon

The moon is pale and sorrowful, the moon is bloodless and frozen

The crescent moon seems to me a gentler profile of the fallen.

I, who prefer the famous pallor and treasure beyond

All the Arab pearls, the freshly open rose and frond,

In a corner of the earth with the colour of life,

I adore that pale moon, I adore that perished face of strife!

And on the altar of the evenings, like a flower alight

And intoxicated by its strange perfumes, my soul surrenders to the fragrance of the

night.

I know of withered lips in blasphemy and wine,

That kiss after an orgy of happiness, their track in the path carving a line;

The crazy people who die loving its reflection on the still lakes…

Because she is the glow of innocence

Because she is at that mysterious light

The pure white will shine and all things are lit up in their prime, and even the darkest souls accept the unknown brightness.