The Out-Spoken Prize for Poetry 2023 is now OPEN.

Rules

Fee

£5 fee is payable for each entry, with a maximum of 5 entries per category from any one entrant.

Winners and Prize

There will be three category winners selected with the overall Prize for Poetry award given to one of the three winners. The overall winner will receive £700.

Dates

Opens for entries: Monday 15th January 2023
Deadline for submissions: Midnight, Tuesday 28th February 2023
Awards ceremony: Thursday 6th April 2023, Southbank Centre, London

A long-list is announced on social media a few weeks after the closing date followed by a short-list in late March. The category winners and overall winner will be announced at the Out-Spoken Awards show at Southbank Centre, central London, on Thursday 6th April 2023.

All shortlisted poets are requested to attend the awards ceremony on Thursday 6th April to read/perform their pieces on the night. The performance category longlist and shortlist will be selected from the submitted films, with the final winner chosen in part based on performances on the evening of the awards ceremony. In the case that the event is unable to take place or entrants are unable to attend, performances will be judged based on submitted films.

How To Enter

Entrants are required to purchase and download the Out-Spoken Prize entry form. All required information must be filled in and then emailed to info@outspokenldn.com. Please note that one entry form is only valid for ONE submission, if entrants wish to make more than one entry they should purchase MULTIPLE forms.

Terms and Conditions Eligibility

OPEN TO UK RESIDENTS ONLY.

Page poems submitted must not have been published previously or won any other awards.

All work submitted into the competition must be the work of a single poet and must be predominantly in English.

All work submitted into the competition must be the original work of the entrant. Anyone thought to be plagiarising material will be immediately disqualified from the competition and will forfeit their submission fee.

All entrants are requested to please be available (COVID risks/restrictions permitting) to attend the award ceremony on the evening of Thursday 6th April 2023 where they will be asked to read/perform/introduce their poem.

In all cases the organiser’s ruling on the eligibility or ineligibility of a poem will be final and binding.

Judging

The Prize will be judged by a panel of 4 judges. The competition organisers reserve the right to change the judging panel without notice. The decision of the judges is final and binding, and they will not enter into any correspondence with entrants regarding their decisions. The judges may choose to jointly award the prize, or highly commend a number of additional poems as well as the winner.

For the performance category, submitted films will be used to select a longlist and shortlist, with the final winner chosen (where possible) based in part on performances during the awards ceremony. In the case that the event is unable to take place or entrants are unable to attend, performances will be judged based on submitted films.

Reproduction of poems

The copyright of each poem remains with the author; however, the winning poems will be published on the Out-Spoken website and social media channels. By entering the competition, the poet grants Out-Spoken the right in perpetuity to publish their poem on the Out-Spoken website, in our newsletter, in associated publications, on social media channels, and in press materials and emails for the purposes of marketing the publication, the Prize or associated work.

Judges

Julianknxx’s work merges his poetic practice with films and performance; he engages in a form of existential inquiry that at once seeks to find ways of expressing the ineffable realities of human experiences while examining the structures through which we live. In casting his own practice as a ‘living archive’ or an ‘history from below’, Julianknxx draws on West African traditions of oral history to reframe how we construct both local and global perspectives. He does this through a body of work that challenges fixed ideas of identity and unravels linear Western historical and socio-political narratives, attempting to reconcile how it feels to exist primarily in liminal spaces.

Toby Campion is an award-winning poet, playwright and facilitator. A former UK Poetry Slam Champion and World Poetry Slam finalist, his poetry won the Aurora Prize for Poetry 2019 and was Highly Commended in the Forward Poetry Prizes 2018. His poems have been published widely, most recently in Magma, The London Magazine & 100 Queer Poems, and his debut play WRECK won a Fifth Word Theatre Award for Most Promising Playwright. Toby is the Director of UniSlam and the founder of the National Youth Poetry Showcase.

Zaffar Kunial lives in Hebden Bridge, West Yorkshire, and was born in Birmingham. His debut collection, Us, was shortlisted for a number of prizes, including the T. S. Eliot Prize. England’s Green is his second book.

Victoria Kennefick's debut poetry collection, Eat or We Both Starve, won the Seamus Heaney First Collection Poetry Prize 2022 and the Dalkey Book Festival Emerging Writer of the Year Award 2022. It was shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize, the Costa Poetry Book Award, the Derek Walcott Prize for Poetry and the Butler Literary Prize. It was a book of the year in The Guardian, The Irish Times, The Telegraph, The Sunday Independent and The White Review. Victoria is 2023 Arts Council Ireland/University College Dublin Writer-in-Residence and the 2022-2024 Poet-in-Residence at the Yeats Society Sligo.

The Out-Spoken Prize for Poetry 2023 is now OPEN.

Rules

Categories

Page Poetry

Performance Poetry

Poetry in film

Judges

ENTER