Stephen Spender would almost certainly have supported Ed Balls' recent decision to scrap SATs for 14-year-olds.

While Spender's talents as a poet and author bloomed at prewar Oxford in the company of W.H.Auden, Christopher Isherwood, Cecil Day-Lewis and Louis MacNeice, he reliably failed to pass any exams. It seems he was simply ambivalent about having his sizeable intellect measured, as he wrote to his grandmother, when he was finally sent down: “It is no use, I am most awfully sorry, but I cannot do examinations; and Schools I never really had any ambition to do properly ... I only care really for poetry and writing.”

The belief that thinking and writing are themselves intensely pleasurable and valuable characterises the spirit of the Stephen Spender Prize for poetry in translation, set up by the Stephen Spender Memorial Trust. While reciting Baudelaire's Le Cygne in French might charm a lover into bed, explaining how you translated it into English will probably send them to sleep. Its reward is itself and it is a task for only the most dedicated and sophisticated linguists.

It is surprising then that 18-year-old Imogen Halstead, of Northampton, won first place in the open category of this year's competition, and more so, that she triumphed with Amores I.I, by Ovid, which Jo Balmer, a judge, described as containing “notoriously difficult metrical, mythological and literary in-jokes”. Indeed, the central joke of the poem relies on the audience's knowledge that epic Latin poetry was written in heavy, dactylic hexameter and love poetry in snappier, elegiac couplets. Ovid wants to write “solemn metre/Of violent wars and slaughter” but complains that Cupid keeps stealing “a foot” from every second line, demoting his weighty epic to love poetry.

Because Ovid commentates on line lengths, Imogen had to wrestle her translation, line by line, into a rigid composition. She then revealed the joke that shapes the poem by adding two lines explaining the difference between the tussling metres: “So thus my war-like drumbeat changed/To Love's inferior measure”.

Given Ovid's linguistic knots it seems amazing that Imogen and Daniel Galbraith (who came first in the under-18 category with Amores I.V.) both chose to tackle his verse. For Imogen, the attraction was that his humour translates surprisingly well: “It is parody - it's easy to laugh at the poet making fun of himself,” she says. It is also astounding that someone with such a brief Latin schooling could preserve this wit. Imogen fell in love with Latin only at A level, when she started working on literature rather than linguistic exercises.

On her return from her gap year working as a teaching assistant at the British School of Beijing, she will study classics at Queens' College, Cambridge, where she hopes to delve further into ancient poetry: “I've studied Latin and Greek only at school and the emphasis has been on doing an accurate translation of a set piece for an examination, whereas in this translation, I enjoyed being freer, and trying to be a bit of a poet myself.” Stephen Spender would undoubtedly approve.

Ovid's Amores I.I.
Translated from the Latin by Imogen Halstead

As I was writing solemn metre
Of violent wars and slaughter,
Cupid, snickering, stole a foot
And made the next line shorter.
So thus my war-like drumbeat changed
To Love's inferior measure
And I, a bard, was so demeaned
For Cupid's idle leisure.
‘What's this?' I cried, ‘Who gave the right
Of meddling to you, boy?
The Muses rule my lofty verse,
It's not your nursery toy!
Should Venus seize the arms of war
While Hera fans Love's flames?
Or Ceres rule the wooded hills,
Diana till the plains?
Apollo with his shining locks
Could not take up the spear,
While Mars attempts to tune the lyre
With war-cry deafened ear.
But, Cupid, you already rule
A great and powerful sphere,
Why then should you aspire to change
My verse? Why interfere?
Perhaps your realm now covers all
To Helicon's leafy dell.
Is Phoebus' lyre no longer safe?
Will that be yours as well?
Each time that I begin my page
And write in warlike length,
The second line cuts short too soon
And undermines my strength.
Besides, I lack a fitting theme
For Love's less weighty beat,
I have no long-haired boy or girl
To make my verse complete.'
No sooner had I thus complained
When Cupid snatched a dart,
An arrow made to seal my fate
And destined for my heart.
He curved the bow across his knee,
And speaking thus, he drew:
‘O Bard, take this to be your theme!'
And out the arrow flew.
Alas! That boy has piercing shots,
Unerring did he fire,
And now in my once empty heart
Roar flames of my desire.
So let my work in six feet rise,
And fall in five once more,
I bid farewell to epic themes,
I'll write of Love not War.
Come, wreathe your golden brow, my Muse,
With myrtle of the sea,
My verse will scan eleven feet
I'll bow to elegy!

Ovid's Amores I.I.

Arma gravi numero violentaque bella parabam
Edere, materia conveniente modis.
Par erat inferior versus: risisse Cupido
Dicitur atque unum surripuisse pedem.

'Quis tibi, saeve puer, dedit hoc in carmina iuris?
Pieridum vates, non tua turba sumus.
Quid, si praeripiat flavae Venus arma Minervae,
Ventilet accensas flava Minerva faces?
Quis probet in silvis Cererem regnare iugosis,

Lege pharetratae virginis arva coli?
Crinibus insignem quis acuta cuspide Phoebum
Instruat, Aoniam Marte movente lyram?
Sunt tibi magna, puer, nimiumque potentia regna;
Cur opus adfectas, ambitiose, novum?

An, quod ubique, tuum est? tua sunt Heliconia tempe?
Vix etiam Phoebo iam lyra tuta sua est?
Cum bene surrexit versu nova pagina primo,
Attenuat nervos proximus ille meos;
Nec mihi materia est numeris levioribus apta,

Aut puer aut longas compta puella comas.'
Questus eram, pharetra cum protinus ille soluta
Legit in exitium spicula facta meum,
Lunavitque genu sinuosum fortiter arcum,
'Quod' que 'canas, vates, accipe' dixit 'opus!'

Me miserum! certas habuit puer ille sagittas.
Uror, et in vacuo pectore regnat Amor.
Sex mihi surgat opus numeris, in quinque residat:
Ferrea cum vestris bella valete modis!
Cingere litorea flaventia tempora myrto,

Musa, per undenos emodulanda pedes!

The Winners

Open category
First: Imogen Halstead, Amores I.I. by Ovid (Latin).
Second: Jane Draycott, an extract from Pearl (anon) (Middle English)
Joint third: Emily Jeremiah, Theorem by Eeva-Liisa Manner (Finnish) and Timothy Allen, an extract from Broken Heart, New Lament by Nguyen Du (Vietnamese).
Commended: Duncan Forbes, Laura Napran, John Richmond, Peter Rumney, The Rev Mervyn Wilson

18 and under
First: Daniel Galbraith, Amores I.V. by Ovid (Latin).
Second: Iwona Luszowicz, In Remembrance of Marie A. by Bertolt Brecht (German).
Third: Rupert Mercer, Catullus VIII (Latin).
Commended: Arabella Currie, Daniel Galbraith, Katharine Gray, Oliver Moody, Michael Warner.

14 and under
Joint winners: Scarlett Koller, Roundelay by Charles d'Orléans (French) and Paula Alonso-Lalanda, Let's Go to the Market by Gloria Fuertes (Spanish).
Commended: Henry Bishop, Thomas Hughes.

Read all the winning translations at stephen-spender.org

Times Recommends

• Superfreakonomics by Steven D Levitt and Stephen J Dubner
• The Times picks the 50 best paperbacks of 2009
• Vincent van Gogh’s letters show the soul of the artist