The National Poetry Competition is an annual poetry prize established in 1978 in the United Kingdom. It is run by UK-based The Poetry Society and accepts entries from all over the world, with over 10,000 poems being submitted to the competition each year. Winning has been an important milestone in the careers of many well-known poets.
Carol Ann Duffy, the UK Poet Laureate from 2009 to 2019, won in 1983 with "Whoever She Was". Looking back, in 2007 she commented: "in those days, one was still called a 'poetess' – so it meant a lot, as a young woman poet, to begin to try to change that". Christopher James, the 2008 winner, commented "if there is an unspoken Grand Slam circuit for poetry prizes, then the National Poetry Competition is definitely Wimbledon – it's the one everyone dreams of winning". Other prestigious names to have won the competition include Ruth Padel, Jo Shapcott, Sinéad Morrissey, Ian Duhig, Colette Bryce and the poet and novelist Helen Dunmore.
Melanie Drane was the first non-British to win, in 2005.
The competition runs annually, opening in the spring and closing at the end of October. A new team of judges (made up of three respected poets) is announced each year. The first prize is and the top three winners are published in Britain's leading poetry magazine, The Poetry Review.
Winners YearAuthor Title Ref1978Michael Hulse "Dole Queue" 1979Medbh McGuckian "The Flitting" 1980Tony Harrison "Timer" 1981James Berry "Fantasy of an African Boy" 1982Philip Gross "The Ice Factory" 1983Carol Ann Duffy "Whoever She Was" 1984Tony Curtis "The Death of Richard Beattie-Seaman in Belgian Grand Prix, 1939" 1985Jo Shapcott "The Surrealists' Summer Convention Came to Our City" 1986Carole Satyamurti "Between the Lines" 1987Ian Duhig "Nineteen Hundred and Nineteen" 1988Martin Reed "The Widow's Dream" 1989William Scammell "A World Elsewhere" 1990Nicky Rice "Room Service" 1991Jo Shapcott "Phrase Book" John Levett "A Shrunken Head" 1992Stephen Knight "The Mermaid Tank" 1993Sam Gardiner "Protestant Windows" 1994David Hart "The Silkies" 1995James Harpur "The Frame of Furnace Light" 1996Ruth Padel "Icicles Round a Tree in Dumfriesshire" 1997Neil Rollinson "Constellations" 1998Caroline Carver "horse underwater" 1999Simon Rae "Believed" 2000Ian Duhig "The Lammas Hireling" 2001Beatrice Garland "undressing" 2002Julia Copus "Breaking the Rule" 2003Colette Bryce "The Full Indian Rope Trick" 2004Jon Sait "Homeland" 2005Melanie Drane "The Year the Rice-Crop Failed" 2006Mike Barlow "The Third Wife" 2007Sinéad Morrissey "Through the Square Window" 2008Christopher James "Farewell to the Earth" 2009Helen Dunmore "The Malarkey" 2010Paul Adrian "Robin in Flight" 2011Allison McVety "To the Lighthouse" 2012Patricia McCarthy "Clothes That Escaped the Great War" 2013Linda France "Bernard and Cerinthe" 2014Roger Philip Dennis "Corkscrew Hill Photo" 2015Eric Berlin "Night Errand" 2016Stephen Sexton "The Curfew" 2017Dom Bury "The Opened Field" 2018Wayne Holloway-Smith "The posh mums are boxing in the square" 2019Susannah Hart "Reading the Safeguarding and Child Protection Policy" 2020Marvin Thompson "The Fruit of the Spirit Is Love (Galatians 5:22)" 2021Eric Yip "Fricatives" 2022Lee Stockdale "My Dead Father's General Store in the Middle of a Desert" 2023Imogen Wade "The Time I Was Mugged in New York City" 2024Fiona Larkin"Absence has a grammar"
References
External links The Poetry Society (National Poetry Competition)