CAFE WRITERS POETRY COMPETITION 2024 IS NOW CLOSED

Thanks to all who supported us by participating. Details of how the Results will be communicated are shown below. The Café Writers Zoom Event on the 10th March 2025 will showcase the winners as well as comments and poems from judge John McCullough.

PRIZES

1st £1000
2nd £300
3rd £200
Five Commended Prizes of £50
Norfolk Prize £100
For the best poem from a permanent Norfolk resident not winning another prize.

ENTRY FEE

£5 per poem; or £13 for 3 poems & £4 per poem thereafter.

Concessions: We are offering the free entry of up to two poems to any UK resident with a household income of less than £16,000 for whom the cost of entering would be prohibitive. Your status to claim this will be taken on trust. See below for more details.

Sole Judge John McCullough

John Mccullough lives in Hove. His third book of poems, Reckless Paper Birds, was published with Penned in the Margins and won the 2020 Hawthornden Prize for Literature as well as being short listed for the Costa Poetry Award. John’s previous collections have been Books of the Year for publications including The Guardian and The Independent and he won the Polari First Book Prize. His poem ‘Flower of Sulphur’ was shortlisted for the 2021 Forward Prize for Best Single Poem. His fourth collection, Panic Response, was published in March 2022 by Penned in the Margins.

Who can enter:

The prize is open to any poet in the world who is over 18 years of age writing in English.

Competition Rules

1. Closing date for receipt of entries: 30th November 2024 (Midnight GMT).
2. The maximum length for each poem is 40 lines excluding the title. Breaks between stanzas do not count towards the total.
3. Café Writers committee members and their families are not eligible to enter.
4. Entries must be entirely the work of the entrant and must never have been published, self-published, published on any website or recorded (poems read at open mics are OK as long as they were not recorded). No posthumous or AI generated entries please.
5. We regret that postal entries cannot be returned.
6. Entries must be in English.
7. Each poem should be sent as a separate PDF document if entering by email. The name of each document should be the name of the poem it contains and have no identifying marks other than the title on either the page or in the document name.
8. Font should be Times New Roman (or similar) 12 point. Pages should not be numbered, there should be no colour, pictures or borders.
9. For postal entries download and print off the entry form here as a PDF
10. Online entries – Pay online using Paypal. Your covering email should include: your name and address, and the titles of your poems. The title of your email should be your name and Paypal transaction number eg John Keats 7PO79029E497164P. Send your poems to: cafewriterscompetition[at]gmail[dot]com
11. Concessionary Entries: for poets on a low household income please send your poems as a separate entry, in a separate email, to any paid entries you might send. Attach the document/s to an email with your name and the word ‘Concession’ in the subject box.
12. No corrections can be made after receipt, nor fees refunded.
13. Worldwide copyright of poems remains with the author, but Café Writers will have the unrestricted right to publish the winning poems on its website and in competition publicity.
14. The Norfolk Prize is awarded to a permanent Norfolk resident, for a poem not winning another prize.
15. The judge’s decision is final and no individual correspondence can be entered into.

Entry implies acceptance of the rules. Failure to comply with entry requirements will result in disqualification.

Receipt: Cafe Writers auto acknowledges all email entries, if you don’t see acknowledgement please check your spam filter – adding our email address to your contacts should prevent this happening. Postal entries can enclose a stamped addressed postcard marked ACKNOWLEDGEMENT.

Results: Winners will be notified by email by 28th February 2025. Results will be published on our website, social media and mailing lists. If you would like to receive an email with the results before they are shared on Social Media, please sign up to our Newsletter by using this link: http://eepurl.com/dtgYrj

The Zoom Prizewinning event will take place on Zoom in March 2025.

Please pay for your entry using the drop-down box below. If you are able to pay for an extra poem to help fund a concessionary entry, please do so on the next page.

1 poem £5.00 GBP
2 poems £10.00 GBP
3 poems £13.00 GBP
4 poems £17.00 GBP
5 poems £21.00 GBP
6 poems £25.00 GBP