News

The Ledbury Poetry Festival Poetry Competition is now open with a great first prize of £1000 cash and a residential course at Tŷ Newydd. The National Writers’ Centre for Wales.

Tŷ Newydd is renowned for its excellent writing courses, taught by outstanding poets, in a beautiful setting. The judge for 2015 is Deryn Rees- Jones and for the first time in 2015 you can enter online.

The 2014 Ledbury Poetry Competition winner Jonathan Edwards has gone on to win the 2014 Costa Prize for Poetry for his first book, My Family and Other Superheroes. On winning the Ledbury Poetry Competition Jonathan said, “Your Festival has been so crucial in my development over the last ten years, both in the poets I've managed to see and through your awesome one-to-one sessions. Thank you!” Jonathan will read at the 2015 Ledbury Poetry Festival and Artistic Director, Chloe Garner says, “Ledbury prides itself in nurturing new talent. We are pleased to have supported Jonathan’s book and delighted that he has gone on to win the Costa Prize. It is an extraordinary achievement.”

The 2015 Poetry Competition judge Deryn Rees-Jones’s most recent books are And You, Helen with Charlotte Hodes (Seren, 2014) and Burying the Wren (2012) shortlisted for the Roland Mathias and T.S. Eliot Prize. She teaches literature at the University of Liverpool and is the new editor of Pavilion Poetry.

Adults:            First Prize         £1000 and a week at Tŷ Newydd

Second Prize     £500

Third Prize       £250

See website for details of Young People and Children’s competition section.

Winners have the opportunity to read their poems at the 2016 Ledbury Poetry Festival.

Go to http://poetry-festival.co.uk/ledbury-poetry-competition/ for further details of our poetry competition and to download an entry form. Entry fees:  first poem £5, for each subsequent poem £3.50. Children and Young People enter their first poem free.