CAFÉ WRITERS POETRY COMPETITION 2026 IS NOW OPEN.

Closing Date 15th November 2026 (Midnight GMT)

PRIZES

• 1st £1000
• 2nd £300
• 3rd £200
• Three Commended Prizes of £30
• Norfolk Prize £50

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 offer free entry of up to two poems to any UK resident with a total household income of less than £16,000. Your status to claim this will be taken on trust. See below for more details.

Our Sole Judge:
Jane Commane is editor at Birmingham-based poetry publisher Nine Arches Press, and co-editor of Under the Radar, a magazine of new writing. Jane is also a poet and author of Assembly Lines (Bloodaxe, 2018) and co-author of How to be a Poet. She is a Writing West Midlands Room 204 Writer, a Jerwood Compton Fellow and was awarded The Cholmondeley Award from the Society of Authors in 2025.

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: 15th November 2026 (Midnight GMT).
2. The maximum length for each poem is 40 lines excluding the title. Breaks between stanzas do not count towards the total. Please do not double space your poem (unless it is an integral part of the lay-out)
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 simultaneous submissions posthumous or AI generated entries please.
5. We regret that postal entries cannot be returned.
6. Entries must be in English.
7. If entering by email each poem should be sent as a separate PDF document. The name of each document should be the name of the poem. There should be no identifying marks other than the title on either the page or in the document name. Please make sure to put the poem’s title at the top of the page.
8. Font should be Times New Roman (or similar) 12 point, single spaced, unless the format of the poem requires different spacing. 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. The email should contain your name, address and the titles of your poems and please be aware that all the other rules apply.
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.

Send your entries to:   cafewriterscompetition[at]gmail[dot]com

Receipt: Cafe Writers auto acknowledges all email entries, if you don’t see an 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 2027. 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 clicking here.

The Zoom Prizewinning event will take place on Zoom in March 2027.

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