NEW Voices First Pamphlet Competition 2023, poets aged 25 and younger

Closing date: 31 July 2023

Our Third New Voices Competition again offers poets aged 25 or younger the opportunity to win a New Voices First Pamphlet Award. The award funds publication of award-winners’ first poetry book published and promoted by Frosted Fire. The judging team will read all the entries, then last year’s award winners, Bethan Manley & Katherine Parsons, will jointly select a long list, then a short list, of potential winners. The final adjudication will be by Marilyn Timms, co-publisher of wildfire words and Frosted Fire.
Each prize book will be published as a pamphlet, which will contain 24 to 32 pages of poetry. Entries for the competition should be a single file containing between 8 and 10 poems that showcase the poet’s work.

• The contest is open to poets worldwide except volunteers for Wildfire Words/Frosted Fire. Entrants must be 25 or less at the closing date of the competition — 31 July 2023. Also, an award will not be made to any poet that already has a poetry pamphlet or collection published or contracted for publication by an independent publisher, before or on 31 July 2023.
• 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.
• Each entry should contain 8 to 10 poems of no more than 70 lines per poem including stanza breaks. Each poem should start on a new page and preferably use 12 pt Calibri type (or similar sanserif face). Winners will be invited to submit enough poems for a 32-page pamphlet.
• You may submit up to three entries, each of 10 poems, provided an entry fee is paid for each.
• 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. The title must also be the name of the file containing your poems.
• 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 any of the judges through workshops, mentoring, or public readings. We will match your entry title to your email address after anonymous judging is complete.
• Each entry must have all the poems in one file in Word or PDF format. If possible, please set the page size to A5 format or 6 x 8 inches.
• 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 6 September to all who entered, and published on wildfire words shortly afterwards.
• An Early Bard discounted entry fee of £9 per entry, or £24 for 3 entries is available until 30 June. After that the entry fee will be £11 each or £30 for 3.
• Entries must be paid for, and your entry file uploaded, by the closing time of 11.59 pm on 31 July.