NILS RöPER’S STORY ‘LOST RANGE’ WINS
THE MOTH NATURE WRITING PRIZE 2025 – JUDGED BY MARK COCKER
‘Lost Range is a worthy
winner. In all senses it is a mature and balanced piece of writing. I enjoyed
the way that the narrator's interior monologue mimics the endless
repetitions and variations of the Nevadan landscape, which are also beautifully
observed. The unfolding ideas and the rhythm of the words are precise, yet they
also capture the random flow of thoughts as we drive. It is equally admirable
for its openhearted approach to one of the big environmental questions ‒
wolves: good or bad? ‒ without having clear designs on the reader’s
opinion.’ Mark Cocker
Nils Röper, who grew up in rural Northern Germany, near the former
Iron Curtain, has a Master’s Degree from New York University and a
Doctorate in
Political Science from the University of Oxford, and splits his time
between Berlin, the family farm and smalltown Idaho while researching social policies and climate change.
‘Like countless
other German kids of the past seven generations or so, I grew to love adventure
stories through the novels of Karl May. Despite never having set foot in
it himself, May wrote in great detail about the Wild West. I’ve been more
fortunate, because I’ve actually gotten to experience parts of the
American West; its vast spaces, ghost towns, overgrown railroad tracks,
valleys with nothing but sagebrush bushes and a few head of cattle. “Lost
Range”, an excerpt from the midpoint of a novel by the same title, is set in
that world. It tells
the story of a maniacally ambitious Oxford professor who has cut all ties
to family and country but is forced to return to his rural American hometown.
Confronting his past, he finds that the people and the land are so
intrinsically linked that he can’t make sense of one without the other. ‘There are more people than ever who don’t live where
they were born and who might think about the things that could’ve been. “Lost
Range” tries to capture a small part of that human experience.’ Nils Röper
2ND PRIZE | Crow Baby by Lauren Nichola Colley
‘Crow Baby is full of tender
humour and playful images while also attending to an otherwise grief-laced
experience. It is this wittiness that lulls us and leaves us unprepared for,
and therefore heightens, the impacts of its unexpected ending.
The unflinching realism of the whole poem was beautifully conceived.’
Mark Cocker
After her first degree in literature at
Cambridge, Colley returned home to study for an MA in Creative Writing at the
University of Nottingham. She is currently working towards her PhD, alongside
teaching, copyediting and travelling. Her first poetry collection Pegging
Out won the Indigo Pamphlet Prize in 2021. She has been mentored and
published in collaboration with the UNESCO City of Literature (Writing the
Contemporary, 2020) and over ten journals including The Rialto, Stand and New
Walk, picking up several prizes along the way. Colley is a strong
advocate for the humility of small lives lived quietly and sees nature poetry
as uniquely able to celebrate that.
‘I’m thrilled that “Crow Baby” could be so
fittingly memorialised. For me, writing poetry has always revealed
to me what I didn’t know mattered.’ Lauren Nichola Colley
3RD PRIZE | Walking on the beach with Mum by William Wyld
‘I loved this for the apparent slightness
of the detail, when set against the gravity of its underlying theme. Rather
like the crabs that are one of the main subjects, the author has approached their underlying emotional experience obliquely. I love the writing’s ambiguity,
particularly the profound connections that are made between the everyday
details and the author’s private eschatology.’ Mark Cocker
William Wyld is a poet, visual artist and carpenter
from London. Raised by a couture dress designer, costume and identity are
central to William's work, which tackles grief, chronic illness and the human
relationship with the natural world through a variety of real and imagined
voices, myth-making and humour. They were highly commended in the Forward Prize
for best poem performed, the Creative Futures Awards and the Bridport Prize.
They have performed at Guilfest, Wilderness Festival, The Barbican Centre and
the Queen Elizabeth Hall alongside the London Philharmonic Orchestra, and their
poetry has appeared in Basket, Propel, Lighthouse, Queer
Life Queer Love II and elsewhere. Wyld is a member of Wild Thing eco-poetry
collective, a Southbank Centre New Poets Collective alum and a Poetry Archive
Now winner. Their paintings have been exhibited at the Royal Academy Summer
Show and Discerning Eye, and their scenic art, constructions and costumes have
appeared in independent film, theatre and museum installations across the UK.
Performing has helped Wyld overcome the
challenges of permanent neurological pain following a spinal injury in 2021,
and in 2024 they retrained in metalwork to assist in the redisplay of the
historic Natural History Gallery at the Horniman Museum and Gardens. Wyld's
debut pamphlet The Butterfly Bush is forthcoming in 2026 with Little
Betty Press.
COMMENDED:
Cow Parsley by Nicola Healey Nicola
Healey’s poems and essays have appeared in Free Bloody Birds, The
Hopkins Review, Poetry Ireland Review, Poetry London, The
Poetry Review and elsewhere. Her first pamphlet, A Newer Wilderness,
was published by Dare-Gale Press in 2024 and won the Michael
Marks Poetry Award. She is currently based in Buckinghamshire.
Heron by Helen Mort
Yearlings by Alyson Rose-Wood
Hum by Craig van Rooyen
Craig van Rooyen lives in San Luis
Obispo on California’s Central Coast among the ghosts of grizzlies and bison,
not to mention Parnassian butterflies and horseshoe shrimp. He is a poet and
judge whose work has appeared in 32 Poems, Best New Poets, Cincinnati Review,
Narrative, New Ohio Review, Ploughshares, Poetry Northwest, Terrain.org, and
elsewhere. He is a past winner of the Rattle Poetry Prize and the Neil Postman
Award for Metaphor. He is a graduate of Pacific University’s MFA program.
Where We Are by Mari Wells
Mari Wells is a hobbyist writer and nature photographer
from the Pacific Northwest whose work is rooted in time spent outdoors.
This is her first-ever submission for publication. She holds a B.A. in history
and will begin her M.A. in the fall.
ABOUT
THE PRIZE
The Moth Nature Writing Prize aims to
encourage and celebrate the art of nature writing. It is awarded annually to three
unpublished pieces of prose or poetry which best combine exceptional
literary merit with an exploration of the writer’s relationship with the
natural world.
The prize is open to anyone over the age
of sixteen, as long as the work is original and previously unpublished.
Each year a single judge is asked to
choose winners from entries worldwide, and the prize is judged anonymously.
PRIZES
1st prize €1,000 plus a
week at The Moth Retreat in rural Ireland
2nd prize €500
3rd €250
TESTIMONIALS
‘If you are engaged with being alive on
this planet just now … and you are not terrified about the future half the
time, you are not paying attention.’ Max Porter (2022 judge)
‘I wish that we would not fight for
landscapes that remind us of who we think we are. I wish we would fight,
instead, for landscapes buzzing and glowing with life in all its
variousness.’ Helen Macdonald (2021 judge)
‘The answer to the still present threat of
a silent spring is for us to sing against the storm.’ Richard Mabey
(2020 judge)
‘What a great competition to be
running.’ Robert Macfarlane
‘The Moth Nature Writing Prize is my first
piece published outside the small circulation of my alma mater and hometown
publications. As such, it feels transformative. Today, as I go about my normal
routine, chatting with customers about the rockfish special or the blustery
weather, I am the same but also new. With this prize, I am grateful and
honoured to be part of an international literary community and I cannot wait to
continue the conversations with you.’ Libby B Bushell
‘It gives me so much confidence and it is
wonderful to have my writing out there and enjoyed by others.’ Sammy
Weaver (2020 winner)
‘I am eternally grateful, however much of
eternity I have left in me.’ Arne Weingart (2021 winner)
|
|
