Competitions and awards
With its comprehensive list of competitions and prizes, the Poetry Society celebrates the achievements of poets working all over the world, whatever stage of their career they are at. Nearly £15,000 is given in monetary prizes each year, along with courses, books, membership and publication, and these competitions and prizes are a central part of the Poetry Society's work.
To find out more about each of the awards read the brief introductions below, clicking on the links to find out more.
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Ted Hughes Award for New Work in Poetry
Awarded annually to a living UK poet, working in any form, who is judged to have made the most exciting contribution to the art form between 1 January and 31 December. Prize: £5,000. Poets are put forward for the award by Poetry Society and Poetry Book Society members. Recommendations for the 2012 award will be accepted until 5 January 2013.
Geoffrey Dearmer Prize
An annual award for a poem published in Poetry Review by a poet who is yet to publish a first collection. Open to poets published in Poetry Review. The next winner will be announced in 2013.
Poetry News Members' Prize
A £300 award to the best poem by a Poetry Society member published in Poetry News each year. Open to members whose poems have been selected for Poetry News. The next winner will be announced in 2013.
Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award
Open to poets aged 11-17, this competition is supported by the Foyle Foundation. The top fifteen winners aged 15-17 spend a week on an Arvon residency course with their judges. Winners in the 11-14 age range win a poet visit to their school. The 2013 competition will open in spring 2013.
National Poetry Competition
Established in 1978, this is one of the world's biggest single-poem poetry competitions. All poems are judged anonymously by a new set of judges each year. First prize £5,000, second £2,000, third £1,000. Open to anyone over the age of 17. The competition is currently closed.
Stanza Poetry Competition
An annual competition exclusively for Poetry Society members who are also Stanza members. The winner receives a free Poetry Prescription or a year's Membership, and the top 3 will be published on our Stanza Competition page online and featured in Poetry News. Open to Stanza members selected for Poetry News. The next winner will be announced in 2013.
SLAMbassadors UK
The SLAMbassadors championship, open to 12-18 year olds, showcases some of the best up and coming performance poets the UK has to offer. Winners join a master class weekend at the Poetry Society and perform live at a prestigious London venue. Not currently accepting entries.
Corneliu M Popescu Prize for European Poetry Translation
A biennial prize run by the Poetry Society in conjunction with The Ratiu Foundation for published collections of poetry translated from a European language into English. The prize is named after Corneliu M Popescu, a young Romanian translator killed in an earthquake in 1977. Details of the next prize have not yet been announced.
Competition News
May 2013
Patricia Mccarthy reads her 1st prize poem from National Poetry Competition at House of Commons on May 15th, launching WWI commemorations
May 2013
Ann Gray, who was commended in the 2010 National Poetry Competition appears alongside US poet Matthew Dickman for an evening of exciting poetry
May 2013
NPC 2011 2nd prize winner Samantha Wynne-Rhydderch is shortlisted for The Wales Book of the Year Award
May 2013
Winner of NPC 2013 Patricia McCarthy will appear in the Keats House Festival in Anonymity & the Prizewinning Poem
March 2013
Kate Tempest wins the Ted Hughes Award for New Work in Poetry 2012.
March 2013
Patricia McCarthy wins the National Poetry Competition 2012.
December 2012
Ian Duhig (winner, NPC 1987 & 2000), Caroline Bird (former Foyle Young Poet) and Zaffar Kunial (third prize, NPC 2011) are all teaching on the Winter Warmer Arvon course in January 2013.
October 2012
Caroline Carver (winner, NPC 1998) was commissioned to write words for a stone which sits outside the new Marine Science Building at Plymouth University.
October 2012
Sam Riviere (commended, NPC 2009) has won the £5,000 Forward Prize for best first collection.
September 2012
Congratulations to Flora de Falbe (winner, FYP 2011), who has won the Young People's category of the Ledbury Poetry Competition.
September 2012
Sam Riviere (commended NPC 2009) has released a new book: Austerities (Faber).
September 2012
The Ovehaul by Julia Copus (winner, NPC 2002) is a Poetry Book Society recommendation.
August 2012
Rhian Gallagher (third prize, NPC 2001) has been announced winner of the $10k New Zealand Post Book Award in the poetry category for her collection Shift (Auckland University Press).
August 2012
Antony Dunn (commended, NPC 2011) is judging the Live Canon International Poetry Competition.
July 2012
Winner of the 1999 Geoffrey Dearmer Prize, Sarah Wardle, has been in touch to tell us about her film, Party Election Broadcast by the Poetry Party, starring Hugh Bonneville.
June 2012
We're pleased to announce Denise Saul as the winner of the Geoffrey Dearmer prize.
June 2012
We're happy to report that the recently announced Eric Gregory Award winners include past-winners of our Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award Caleb Klaces and Phoebe Power, and Jon Stone, who was commended in the National Poetry Competition 2009 and 2011.
May 2012
The Malarkey (Bloodaxe) by Helen Dunmore is a Poetry Book Society recommendation. The title poem won the National Poetry Competition in 2009.
May 2012
Jon Stone's School of Forgery (Salt) is a Poetry Book Society recommendation. Jon was commended in the National Poetry Competition 2009 and 2011.
May 2012
Ian Pindar, who came second in the National Poetry Competition 2010, has published his second collection since winning: Constellations (Carcanet).
April 2012
The Dark Film by Paul Farley, who was shortlisted for the Ted Hughes Award 2009, is published this month. The title will be a Poetry Book Society Choice and is shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot prize.
March 2012
Read the NPC 2011 prize-winning poems, or watch them performed by their authors, here.
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