Thank you to all who supported wildfire words and frosted fire at Cheltenham Poetry Festival during 2021. Whether you entered or judged our competitions, submitted poetry to our ezine, attended winners’ events & book launches, or bought books from our wonderful authors, you are a valuable part of our best publishing year yet.
Our raison d’etre is sponsoring the Cheltenham Poetry Festival. We are grateful for all the collaborative support of Anna, Zoe, and Annie, the Festival management team, particularly for hosting our online events.
More than 700 poets from 15 countries submitted their work to wildfire words through our three competitions or our online magazine (ezine). We published nearly 100 poets online, and more than 60 of them read at Festival Zoom events. We are proud of publishing award-winning debut pamphlets for six wonderful poets – Ben Verinder, David Lukens, Imogen Osborne, Lee Potts, Maeve Henry, and Natalie Perman.
For 2022, we plan to build on our growing momentum. Our three competitions will run again, and previous winners of each will play a key role in anonymous judging of the entries. Once again, the total prize fund will be well over £3,000. After paying the judges and publishing expenses, any surplus will be donated as usual to sponsor Cheltenham Poetry Festival events and outreach programmes. We are also beefing up our free submission programme for poems published in the wildfire words ezine.
wildfire-words.com 