The entry fee is £4 per poem for age ’18 & Over’, and free of charge for under 18s

Over 18s can submit up to five poems, under 18s one poem

Entrants can enter poems from any country in the world, but they must be written in English.

You can write your poems in any format – haiku, sonnet, blank verse etc.

Your poem(s) must be no more than 30 lines long

Registration, entry and any payment due must be completed online through our official competition platform Skor.ie

Poems are now entered as text on the website, rather than as a file.  You can format your text once it has been entered

The competition is judged anonymously, so please don’t add your name, address or any other identifier to your poem text

Deadline for entry is Sunday 7th January  2024 at 11.55pm

JUDGE -WE ARE DELIGHTED THAT THIS YEAR’S COMPETITION WILL BE JUDGED BY WENDY PRATT.

WENDY’S THOUGHTS ON THE THEME ‘NATURE UNBOUND’:

“I’m looking for poems that escape the confines of traditional nature writing. I’m looking for writing that reflects the drive that nature has to just be, no matter where the boundaries lie. I’m looking for innovation of craft and thought. Not just dandelions squeezing through the gaps between paving slabs, what about the re-wilding of rivers, what about the window box encouraging pollinators in a high rise flat, what about the nightingales singing from the overgrowth of an industrial estate’s wasteland. Grow your thoughts, let your poems flourish. Where is the connection to nature that doesn’t conform to stereotype? How do you connect to nature if your life is constrained by circumstance, disability, societal?  Nature Unbound is about thinking outside of traditional nature writing tropes. I’m excited to see where you take it.”