Ledbury Poetry Competition 2024

Ledbury Poetry Competition 2024 now is over!

Ledbury Poetry Competition 2024: Ledbury Poetry is thrilled to announce that this year’s poetry competition is now open for applicants and like every year is open to poets writing in the English language.

Short description

Ledbury Poetry is thrilled to announce that this year’s poetry competition is now open for applicants and like every year is open to poets writing in the English language.

The competition is part of the Ledbury Poetry Festival that takes place each July in Ledbury, England.

The judge this year will be Maya C. Popa. Maya is most recently the author of Wound is the Origin of Wonder (W. W. Norton, 2022; Picador, 2023), a finalist for the 2023 Levis reading prize from VCU.

You may enter up to 10 poems at any time.

Winners will be invited to perform their work at Ledbury Poetry Festival 2025.

Submission requirements:

➜ The length of each poem must not exceed 40 lines. (This applies to the written lines of the poem. Titles, epigraphs, line spaces between stanzas and dedications are not counted as lines.)
➜ Please submit each poem as a single PDF file. Each poem must be submitted as a separate document, up to 10 documents can be attached to your application online.
➜ Please include the title of your poem in the poem and name your file with the title of your poem.
➜ The competitor’s name must NOT appear in the poems or in the document file name – names must be included on the entry form details only.
➜ All entries must be the original work of the entrant and should not have been previously published, broadcasted, or accepted for publication by a magazine, or have won competitions elsewhere.

Who may enter?

The competition is international, open to poets writing in the English language. The competition is open to anyone aged 18 years or older.

Prize:

➜ First Prize: £1000 cash and a week’s poetry course with Arvon
➜ Second Prize: £500
➜ Third Prize: £250

Entry fees:

Each entry costs £6.