First Pamphlet Competition, poets aged 25 or less

The winners of the New Voices First Pamphlet Award 2022 are:
Goodnight Cariad by Bethan Manley
Little Intimacy by Katherine Parsons

Highly Commended are:
Search Engine by Anna Nightingale
Sourpuss by Benjamin Husbands
A New England by Jake Smith
Tangerine by Sofía Masondo
Luminous in the Mud by Toby Cotton

Commended are:
Heretofore by Arnold T Rice
Those Glowing Years by Elena Walker
This Savage Love This Soft by Perla Kantarjian

Judges Imogen Osborne and Natalie Perman read all entries for this contest and prepared a long list of 11 contenders for an award. Each of these long-listed poets has been invited to choose two poems from their collection for publication in an online New Voices 2022 anthology and to read at the Zoom event on 7 May.
Lead judge and co-publisher of Frosted Fire, Marilyn Timms, made the final adjudication of award winners and commended poets.

Grateful thanks to Annie Ellis, competition administrator, for ensuring that all entries are anonymously filed for the judges.


New Voices Awards are for poets aged no more than 25 — and focus on quality publication of the winning poet’s first poetry collection. Each collection is a pamphlet of up to 36 pages, published by Frosted Fire.

The New Voices Award includes 50 free copies, (worth £350) publication of poems in wildfire words, and headline poet status in an international online Zoom book launch. Also, winners of this annual award are generally invited to judge the next competition.

Long-listed poets readings on Zoom 7pm Saturday 7 May

All of the outstanding New Voices long-listed poets will be reading two of their poems at this event, for which free audience tickets are available. Please use the form below if you would like to reserve a place. The event will last approximately 1hour 20 minutes. A Zoom link will be emailed to all placeholders about 2 days before the event.
Please note: Only people with their name on the placeholder list will be admitted from the waiting room into the meeting. Please ensure that your own name shows on the device (phone, tablet, or laptop) that you are using to link to the event.

Rules for New Voices competition 2022

Closing date: 7 March 2022

The prize book will be published as a pamphlet which contains up to 28 pages of poetry. Entries for the competition should be as a single file containing up to 10 poems that showcase the poet’s work.

• The contest is open to all poets who are aged 25 or less on 28 February 2022, except poets who act as managers or volunteers in Cheltenham Poetry Festival or Wildfire Words/Frosted Fire. The winner must not have had a pamphlet or collection published by an independent publisher, or contracted for publication before or on 28 February 2022.
• All poems must be entirely the entrant’s own work. Individual poems in an entry may have been published online, in journals or magazines, or multi-author anthologies, provided the writer retains copyright.
• International entrants are welcome.
• Your entry should contain up to 10 poems of no more than 60 lines each. Each poem should start on a new page and be in 12 pt Calibri type or similar.
• You may submit up to three entries, each of 10 poems, provided an entry fee is paid for each entry.
• Your entry’s title should appear on a separate first page. The title may relate to a key poem or suggest the collection’s theme if it has one.
• To maintain anonymous judging, there must be no identifying marks on any poem or title page. Your entry must not contain any poem that might be recognized by one of the judges through workshops, mentoring, or public readings.
• Each entry should be in one file in Word, Rich Text format, or PDF.
• Do not put any identification on the work. The competition administrator will match your entry title to your email address and name after the anonymous judging process is complete.
• Simultaneous submissions are accepted, but an entry must be withdrawn in the event of it winning a prize or publication elsewhere. Entry fees are not refundable once an entry has been received.
• Work will not be returned, so please keep a copy.
• We are unable to give feedback on individual entries or on the results of the competition — the judges’ decisions are final.
• Results will be emailed by 18 April 2022 to all who entered, and published on this website shortly afterwards.
• The fee is £10 per entry.
• Entries must be paid for on the entry form, and your entry file uploaded, by the closing time of 11.59 pm on 7 March 2022.