Helen Mort to judge £1,000 Rialto Nature and Place competition
Helen Mort will be judging the 2025 Rialto Nature and Place poetry competition. First prize is £1,000, and the deadline is 1 April 2025. More details
2nd February 2025
Rory Waterman to judge £600 Ver Poets competition
Rory Waterman will be judging the £600 Ver Poets competition. The deadline is 30 April. More details
2nd February 2025
Dancing in the street? You might be if you win this Motown poetry competition
Clevedon LitFest is now open for submissions for its Motorcitysixty poetry competition, which marks the 60th anniversary of the first Motown Revue tour outside the US in 1965.
Entrants worldwide, a...
2nd February 2025
Deadline nears for £1,000 Kent & Sussex Poetry Society competition
Kit Fan will be judging the £1,000 Kent & Sussex Poetry Society open poetry competition. The deadline is 31 January 2025. More details
29th January 2025
Chris Hardy to judge South Downs Binsted prize
Chris Hardy will be judging the £250 South Downs Poetry Festival’s Binsted prize. Poems must be previously unpublished and not exceed 40 lines. The deadline is 31 March. More details
16th January 2025
Poems on exile sought to mark Byron bicentenary
The £1,000 Keats-Shelley prizes for essays and poems have opened for entries. The theme for this year’s prizes is ‘Exile’, to mark the bicentenary of Byron’s death.
Entrants to the Keats-Shelley p...
1st January 2025
Roger McGough to judge Arts Richmond poetry prize
Roger McGough will be judging the £250 Arts Richmond poetry prize. The theme is 'Changes'. The deadline is 17 January 2025. More details
30th December 2024
Wendy Pratt to judge Shepton Mallet Snowdrop festival poetry competition
Wendy Pratt will be judging the £300 Shepton Mallet Snowdrop festival poetry competition. The theme is 'Treasures of nature'. The deadline is 6 January 2025. More details
30th November 2024
Deadline nearing for National Poetry Competition entries
The 31 October deadline is nearing for the Poetry Society's £5,000 2024 National Poetry Competition entries. This year's judges are Stephen Sexton, Romalyn Ante and John McAuliffe. More details here
...28th October 2024
Jacqueline Saphra to judge Waltham Forest competition
Jacqueline Saphra will be judging the £400 Waltham Forest poetry competition on the theme of Friendship. There is also an extra prize for the funniest poem. The deadline is 14 October. More details
3rd October 2024
Deadline nears for £2,000 Troubadour poetry prize
The 23 September deadline is nearing for entries to the £2,000 Troubadour international poetry prize, run by Coffee-House Poetry. The judges are Jane Yeh and Glyn Maxwell. More details
7th September 2024
Clare Shaw to judge Winchester poetry prize
Clare Shaw will be judging this year’s £1,000 Winchester poetry prize. The deadline is 31 July. More details
29th June 2024
Fran Lock and Alan Morrison to judge Bread and Roses poetry awards
Fran Lock and Alan Morrison will be judging the 2024 Bread and Roses poetry award organised by Culture Matters. There will be five prizes of £100 each for the best poems. Entry is free, and the deadli...
19th June 2024
Helen Ivory to judge Gloucestershire poetry society competition
Helen Ivory will be judging Gloucestershire Poetry Society’s £200 open poetry competition. The deadline is 31 July. More details
PHOTOGRAPH: BLOODAXE BOOKS
6th June 2024
Deadline nears for Wirral Poetry Festival competition
David J Costello be judging the Wirral Poetry Festival open poetry competition. First prize is £250, and the deadline is 31 May. More details
21st May 2024
Graham Mort to judge Frogmore Press prize
Graham Mort will be judging the Frogmore Press poetry prize. The prize is 250 guineas, and the deadline is 31 May. More details
9th April 2024
Lifeboat station runs poetry competition to mark RNLI's 200th anniversary
An open poetry competition, Carry Us Home, to celebrate 200 years of the RNLI is being run by Sheringham lifeboat station in Norfolk. The judge is Moniza Alvi, and the deadline is 5 April. Poems are i...
1st March 2024
Adele Ward to judge Green Fuses anthology competition
Adel Ward is the judge for VOLE books Winter/Spring competition. An anthology of the winning and short-listed poems titled Green Fuses will be published in April 2024 and all the poets included will r...
20th February 2024
Zaffar Kunial to judge Rialto nature and place competition
Zaffar Kunial will be judging The Rialto’s £1,000 Nature and Place poetry competition. The Rialto magazine is working in association with the RSPB, BirdLife International, Cambridge Conservation Initi...
4th February 2024
Kathryn Gray to judge Kent and Sussex poetry competition
Kathryn Gray will be judging the £1,000 Kent and Sussex open poetry competition. The deadline is 31 January. More details
21st January 2024
Discoveries in the sand? Bournemouth Writing Festival's competition theme
'Lines in the sand' is the theme of Bournemouth Writing Festival's competition. Organisers are looking for poems of up to 30 lines, excluding the title. There is also a flash fiction category. The jud...
21st January 2024
Denise Saul to judge international Wales Poetry Award
Denise Saul will be judging the £500 international Wales Poetry Award for a single poem. The deadline is 5 February. More details
15th January 2024
Tom Sleigh and Mona Arshi to judge Troubadour prize
Tom Sleigh and Mona Arshi will be judging this year's £2,000 Troubadour poetry prize. The deadline is 10 December. More details
8th December 2023
Martin Figura to judge £1,000 Cafe Writers competition
Martin Figura will be judging the £1,000 Café Writers competition. The deadline is 30 November. More details
13th November 2023
Malika Booker to judge Teignmouth poetry competition
Malika Booker, who won this year’s Forward prize for best single published poem for the second time, will be judging the £600 Teignmouth poetry festival competition. The closing date is 31 January 202...
1st November 2023
Uplands the theme for Cambrian Mountains Society poetry competition
The Cambrian Mountains Society is inviting entries in Welsh or English to its poetry competition based on the theme of Uplands. The deadline is 30 November. More details
29th October 2023
Deadline nears for National Poetry Competition
Will Harris, Clare Pollard and Jane Draycott will be judging the 2023 National Poetry Competition, organised by the Poetry Society. The deadline is 31 October. The first poem submitted costs £8. Subse...
5th October 2023
Manchester Cathedral opens door to poetry submissions
Manchester Cathedral’s poetry competition is open for submissions, with the theme this year ‘A Truth’. Organisers say they are looking for poems “which examine the notion of truth and subjectivity, th...
9th September 2023
Pat Edwards to judge Ironbridge Festival of the Imagination competition
Pat Edwards will be judging the £300 Ironbridge Festival of the Imagination poetry competition. The deadline is 17 September. The fee to enter is £4. If multiple poems are entered in the same submissi...
31st July 2023
Jessica Mookherjee to judge Gloucestershire poetry competiton
Jessica Mookherjee will be judging the Gloucestershire Poetry Society open poetry competition. First prize is £150, and entry is £4 per poem. The deadline is 31 August. More details
31st July 2023
Zaffar Kunial to judge £1,000 Winchester poetry prize
Zaffar Kunial will be judging the £1,000 Winchester poetry prize. The deadline is 31 July. More details
20th July 2023
Steve Pottinger to judge £300 PPP competition
Steve Pottinger will be judging the inaugural Poets, Prattlers and Pandemonialists (PPP) poetry competition. First prize is £300, and the deadline is 30 June. All proceeds, once costs are covered, wil...
24th May 2023
Forward prizes founder to judge £1,000 Wells competition
The founder of the Forward prizes, William Sieghart, will be judging the £1,000 Wells Festival of Literature open poetry competition. The deadline is 30 June. More details
24th May 2023
Poetry competition in honour of Hexham poet
A new £200 poetry competition for adults and children has been launched in Hexham, Northumberland, in honour of a local-born feminist poet, Elizabeth Gibson Cheyne. She was the sister of the first wor...
13th April 2023
Roger Robinson to judge £5,000 Bridport prize
Roger Robinson will be judging the 50th Bridport poetry competition prize. The deadline is 31 May 2023. More details
5th April 2023
Chris Hardy to judge £300 Slipstream Poets competition
Chris Hardy will be judging the £300 Slipstream Poets open competition. Entries must be no longer than 60 Lines. The deadline is 15 March. More details
8th March 2023
Julia Webb to judge £600 Ver Poets competition
Julia Webb will be judging the £600 Ver Poets competition. The deadline is 30 April. More details
6th March 2023
Wendy Klein to judge £300 South Downs competition
Wendy Klein will be judging the £300 South Downs poetry festival competition. The deadline is 15 April. More details
6th March 2023