Ironbridge Festival Poetry Competition

The Ironbridge Festival is open for 2025 poetry submissions. The competition is open to poets from across the globe.

Accepting poems on any and every subject. Poems must be previously unpublished. Poems must be in English, and no more than 35 lines long.

Poems must not have been previously published in any public forum (either in print or on a website), nor should they be currently submitted for future publication elsewhere.

The competition opens on Tuesday April 1st, and entries need to be in before the deadline of 6pm on May 26th.

First place in the competition will win £300, with a second prize of £125, and three third prizes of £25 each.

Poems will be read, and winners chosen, by judge Liz Lefroy.

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.