The 2025 National Poetry Competition, run by the Poetry Society, is open for entries. This year’s judges are Denise Saul, Ian Duhig and Susannah Dickey. The first prize is £5,000. The entry fee is £8 for the first poem, and £6 for subsequent poems per submission. Poetry Society members are entitled ...

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Mike Jenkins will be judging the £500 Welsh poetry competition. The deadline is 29 June. More details

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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

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Rory Waterman will be judging the £600 Ver Poets competition. The deadline is 30 April. More details

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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...

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Kit Fan will be judging the £1,000 Kent & Sussex Poetry Society open poetry competition. The deadline is 31 January 2025. More details  

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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 Poems must be previously unpublished and not exceed 40 lines.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

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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...

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Roger McGough will be judging the £250 Arts Richmond poetry prize. The theme is 'Changes'. The deadline is 17 January 2025. More details  

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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  

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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

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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

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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

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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...

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Helen Ivory will be judging Gloucestershire Poetry Society’s £200 open poetry competition. The deadline is 31 July. More details

PHOTOGRAPH: BLOODAXE BOOKS 

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David J Costello be judging the Wirral Poetry Festival open poetry competition. First prize is £250, and the deadline is 31 May. More details 

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Graham Mort will be judging the Frogmore Press poetry prize. The prize is 250 guineas, and the deadline is 31 May. More details  

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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...

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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...

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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...

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Kathryn Gray will be judging the £1,000 Kent and Sussex open poetry competition. The deadline is 31 January. More details 

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'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...

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Denise Saul will be judging the £500 international Wales Poetry Award for a single poem. The deadline is 5 February. More details 

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Tom Sleigh and Mona Arshi will be judging this year's £2,000 Troubadour poetry prize. The deadline is 10 December. More details 

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Martin Figura will be judging the £1,000 Café Writers competition. The deadline is 30 November. More details

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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...

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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

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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...

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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...

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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...

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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

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Zaffar Kunial will be judging the £1,000 Winchester poetry prize. The deadline is 31 July. More details

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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...

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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

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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...

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Roger Robinson will be judging the 50th Bridport poetry competition prize. The deadline is 31 May 2023. More details  

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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

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