Open Poetry Competition
Poets showed off their lyrical and elegiac skills in the Open Poetry 2025 competition
with entries from around the world.
Top prize is £1,000, with £500 and £250 going to second and third-placed entrants,
and £100 for the best entry from a local poet.
We are delighted to announce the 2025 Open Poetry Shortlist
The following poems will be read at Cedar’s Hall on Monday 20 October.
A Phenomenology Of Alzheimer’s Disease – Lesley Saunders
Anemochory – Alice Herve
Beneath Another Waning Moon – Kerry Rawlinson
Collector – Judith Wozniak
Dinger Short For Schrodinger – Sharon Black
Fairground Attraction – Glyn Matthews
Hawthorn, A Tree In Season – Martin Spiller
Humdinger Words – Ben Dali
Inconsistency – Maggie Wadey
Local And Rare – Jane Crozier
My Mother The Showgirl, Prays To St Gerard Majella – Morag Anderson
Remaking The Maps – Damen O\’Brien
Sight Test – Graeme Ryan
Somerset Her Record 17284: Milestone, Old Frome Road,
Doulting – Hannah Hogan
Song Of Myself – Stephan Carroll
The First And Last Whale Of The Moon – Nicholas Hogg
The Hill Of Forgotten – Jonathan Finch
The Old Poet – Stephan Carroll
Toadsmoor – Noriko Konuma
To The Moon – Stephan Carroll
Unseen – Judith Wozniak
The following poems have also been shortlisted and can be found in the Poetry Booklet distributed at the Prize Giving
and Poetry Reading event.
An Ode To Peola And Her Worldly Counterparts – Lanai McAuley
Be Your Own Unavailable Girlfriend Local – Cora Ruskin
Diminutive Soloist Philip – Rosel Baker
God Is An Armadillo – Peter Devonald
High Flying Electric Bird – Alison G. Dunhill
Lupa – Maria Roe
No One To Tell – Hilary Fearn
Sonnet And Psalm – Patrick Nathan
The Contender – Simon Heathcote
The First Ballet In Space – Stephen Francis
The Gauntlets -Thea Smiley
The Homecoming – Damen O\’Brien
Translation – John Frew
Prize Giving and Poetry Reading take place on Monday 20 October starting at 2pm as part of the Festival.
Tickets to this event are free but seats can be reserved through Cedars Hall.
Open Poetry Judge 2025
Camille Ralphs
Camille has just had her first full collection of poems published by Faber & Faber, titled After You Were, Here I Am. Her work embodies themes of miracles and magic beginning with a reimagining of the Common Book of Prayer. In Malkin she gives voice to the women accused of witchcraft in the Pendle Witch Trials of 1612, while a third section revisits Elizabethan occultist John Dee. Camille is poetry editor of the Times Literary Supplement and teaches at the University of Oxford.