The Kent & Sussex Poetry Society

OPEN TO POEMS FROM ALL OVER THE WORLD

DEADLINE 31 JANUARY 2027

We are pleased to announce that our annual Open Poetry Competition is now open for entries. It will be judged this year by the award winning poet Jane Draycott

Poet and translator Jane Draycott’s collections from Carcanet include The Kingdom (2022), The Occupant (Poetry Book Society Recommendation), Over (T S Eliot Prize shortlist), Prince Rupert’s Drop (Forward Prize shortlist) and her 2011 prize-winning translation of the the medieval dream-elegy Pearl.Other collections, from Two Rivers Press, include Storms Under the Skin: Selected Poems of Henri Michaux, 1927-1954 (a PBS Recommended Translation), and two collections with artist Peter Hay: Christina the Astonishing, co-authored with Lesley Saunders, and Tideway, both reissued in 2022 in the TRP Illustrated Classics series. A recipient of the Keats Shelley Prize for Poetry, Draycott has been NL Letterenfonds Writer in Residence in Amsterdam and was winner of the 2014 Hippocrates Prize for Poetry and Medicine. In 2023 she was the recipient of a Society of Authors Cholmondeley Award. A Next Generation Poet (2004), she is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and teaches on Oxford University’s postgraduate Creative Writing programme. Visit Jane Draycott’s website.

The deadline for entries is 31st January 2027

As in previous years, we offer seven prizes:

1st Prize: £1000

2nd Prize: £300

3rd Prize: £100

4th Prize: 4 x £50

Entry fee: £5 per poem; or, for 3 or more poems, £4 each. (PLEASE PAY USING THE PAYPAL BUTTONS BELOW)

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ENTRY IS BY EMAIL ONLY

Deadline for receipt of entries: 31^st January 2027.

Any number of poems can be submitted, on payment of £5 per poem, or £4 each for three poems or more.

• The competition is for anyone aged 16 and over, from anywhere in the world.
• Poems must be in English, on any subject, in any style, no longer than 40 lines.
• All poems must be entirely your own original work. Any submission found to be written, co-written, or generated using AI will be immediately disqualified.
• Poems should have not been published elsewhere (including self-published) by 21st April 2027. Nor should they be entered into any other competition for which the results will be announced before 21st April 2027.

Please send your poems by email to kentandsussexpoetry@gmail.com in a single Word or pdf attachment, formatted A4, and with each poem starting on a new page, after paying the entry fee using the PayPal buttons below. Please do not sent multiple files, or files in other formats than Word or pdf.

Please ensure the poem is formatted as you wish it to be read. If the form is complex, it is advisable to use a pdf format.

All poems are judged anonymously, so should not bear your name, nor any other form of identification. 

In your covering email, please give:

• Your name and postal address
• A list of the titles of all poems submitted
• The date you made your Paypal payment (and the name under which it was made, if not your own).

We will acknowledge receipt of entries by means of an automated reply. Prize winners only will be contacted with news of the judge’s decision, by mid-April. The results will be announced on our website on April 21st, 2027.

All entries are read by the judge, whose decision is final. There can be no correspondence concerning the result. No person may win more than one prize.

Prize-winning poems will be posted on our website, and also included in our annual Folio publication. Prize winners will also be invited to read their poems at our monthly meeting in Tunbridge Wells on April 20th 2027, where Jane will also read from her own work.

Closing Date: 31st January 2027 (midnight, UK time).

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