Poetry Book Society

Posted: 6 May 2011

Mslexia Poetry Competition 2011

JUDGE: Jo Shapcott

1st Prize: £2,000 plus a week at the idyllic poets' retreat of Cove Park* and a mentoring afternoon with the editor of premier poetry magazine, Poetry Review**
2nd Prize: £400
3rd Prize: £200
20 other finalists receive £25 each

All winning poems will appear in issue 51 of Mslexia, published in October 2011

Entry fee: £7 for up to three poems

CLOSING DATE: 18 July 2011

Please make sure you have read the rules thoroughly before submitting your entry.

READ THE COMPETITION RULES | FAQS

ENTER THE COMPETITION

* The Cove Park retreat is accommodation only, dates to be agreed between Cove Park and the competition winner.
** The mentoring afternoon with the editor of Poetry Review must be taken at a time that is suitable to both the editor and the competition winner.
The prizes additional to the winners' fee are optional, and will be passed on to other winners if they are not taken by the first prize-winner. The winner is responsible for any other expenses involved with attending the Cove Park retreat and the mentoring afternoon, i.e travel, food, etc. The prizes must be taken by 31 December 2012.

Judge: Jo Shapcott

"What kind of poems do I admire? Not ones like my own. I like to be surprised, to read something unexpected. Many poets entering competitions think they stand a better chance if they put in poems they think have an echo of something the judge might have written. Not so in my case. And I want to read poems which are deft and intrinsically just as they should be but, if anything, run counter to trends and fashions, poems which, as Emily Dickinson famously said, make me feel as if the top of my head is taken off."

Jo Shapcott was born in London. Poems from her three award-winning collections, Electroplating the Baby (1988), Phrase Book (1992) and My Life Asleep (1998) are gathered in a selected poems, Her Book (2000). She has won a number of literary prizes including the Costa Book of the Year Award, the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best First Collection, the Forward Prize for Best Collection and the National Poetry Competition (twice). Tender Taxes, her versions of Rilke, was published in 2001; Of Mutability, winner of the Costa Book of the Year Award, in 2010. She is Professor of Creative Writing at Royal Holloway College, University of London, where she teaches on the MA in Creative Writing; and the current President of The Poetry Society.

Source: Mslexia

Categories: Poetry Prizes

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