2024 Open Poetry Competition
Enter our 2024 Open Poetry Competition to make sure you are in with a chance of winning one of our generous cash prizes. First Prize is a whopping £1000, followed by £500 for second prize and £250 for third prize. There’s even £100 for the best local poet! Our competitions are now closed.
To be judged by Dr Anthony Joseph FRSL, award-winning Trinidad-born poet, novelist, academic and musician, is a Lecturer in Creative Writing at Kings College, London. His 2022 collection Sonnets for Albert featured at our 2023 Festival and won the TS Eliot Prize for Poetry 2022 and the OCM BOCAS Prize for Caribbean Poetry.
He is the author of five poetry collections and three novels. His 2018 novel Kitch: A Fictional Biography of a Calypso Icon was shortlisted for several awards and his most recent fiction publication is the experimental novel The Frequency of Magic. In 2019, he was awarded a Jerwood Compton Poetry Fellowship.
(As a musician, he has released eight critically acclaimed albums, and in 2020 received a Paul Hamlyn Foundation Composers Award.)
Prize Giving and Poetry Reading takes place on Friday 25 October starting at 10am as part of the Festival.
Please read the rules and terms and conditions before submitting your entry.
Competitions Archive
Winners of our previous Competitions