The competition is for unpublished poems in the English language of no more than 50 lines. The first prize is £300 plus the opportunity to appear at the 2025 Cheltenham Poetry Festival (either online or in Cheltenham). There is no theme to this competition, so simply submit your best poem. You can enter as many poems as you wish.

Poems must be in English and not published.

The Judge is British poet Roy McFarlane.

The deadline for entering the competition is 23.59 Sunday 20th October 2023. Any entries received after that time will excluded. Winners will be notified in December 2024.

We are keen to encourage quality, so suggest writers to check their stories before submitting using Prowritingaid. They have free and paid versions and are the best writing software we know to help improve grammar, readability and check for repetition, ‘sticky’ sentences and suggest alternatives.