Out-Spoken Press Emerging Poets Development Scheme
APPLICATIONS OPEN UNTIL 22 MARCH 2024
Out-Spoken Press, together with our partners Spread the Word and New Writing North, are delighted to introduce the third year of our Emerging Poets Development Scheme, offering targeted, integrated support and resources to four emerging poets over the course of a year — including regular one-to-one feedback, together with craft and practical resources — aiming to ready you for publication.
We believe that early-career support is key to a vibrant poetry sector, and are keen to establish an ethical space for this: providing both the craft and pastoral support to ensure your work reaches its potential and that you’re empowered to navigate and advocate for yourself in the industry.
We hope that this scheme will help create a meaningful practical opportunity to open up access to what may still feel like a ‘closed shop’ sector.
Who is it for?
The scheme is aimed at emerging poets. You must be at least 18 years old on the closing date of submissions. ‘Emerging’ is about where you are at in your career, not your age — there is no upper age limit. There is no minimum publication requirement but if you have previously published a full-length collection of poetry you are not eligible.
Of the four places, two will be selected in conjunction with New Writing North as part of the Northern Writers’ Awards, and two through our submission portal:
If you are resident in the North of England (defined as the areas covered by Arts Council England in Yorkshire, North East and North West), you should apply through the Northern Writers’ Awards, Northern Debut Awards portal here: https://newwritingnorth.submittable.com/submit/280150/northern-debut-awards-poetry-2024 by the Northern Writers' Awards deadline of 12 February 2024. The poets selected through the Northern Writers’ Awards will be two of the Northern Debut Awards winners, a programme that offers developmental support and a bursary of £2000 to emerging poets.
If you are resident in any other part of the UK, you should apply through the submissions portal set out below.
What does it involve?
The scheme will run from July 2024–September 2025 and will provide one-to-one craft development as well as wider resources to help equip you to pursue publication and develop your career, including:
monthly written feedback and one-to-one creative manuscript development sessions with Anthony Anaxagorou;
free access to our Out-Spoken Press online craft workshops, including video recordings;
a £100 cash bursary to attend in-person or online poetry events;
one-to-one professional development sessions with Spread the Word;
insight on the less-visible industry knowhow that empowers writers to pursue their careers in the poetry sector.
At the present time we are planning for all activities to take place remotely.
How can I apply?
Applications for the Out-Spoken Press Emerging Poets Development Scheme are OPEN UNTIL 11PM (UK) 22 MARCH 2024.
The scheme is open to poets resident in the UK. You will need to provide a sample of your poetry, together with some further information about yourself, your writing, your aims and what you’d like to gain from participating in the scheme.
Poets who live in the North of England (defined as the areas covered by Arts Council England in Yorkshire, North East and North West), should apply through the New Writing North Northern Writers’ Awards portal here: https://newwritingnorth.submittable.com/submit/280150/northern-debut-awards-poetry-2024 by the Northern Writers' Awards deadline of 12 February 2024. These two mentees will be selected by Malika Booker and Anthony Anaxagorou.
Poets who live in the rest of the UK should apply:
(a) through our Submittable portal; or
(b) by downloading a paper form here and posting this to us together with your writing sample; or
(c) by audio file, or as a video file if you use a BSL interpreter. Please contact us by email on press@outspokenldn.com if you wish to submit by audio or video file.
In each instance you will need to provide a sample of your poetry (up to 5 poems or 4 pages of A4, whichever is shorter). These two mentees will be selected by Sandeep Parmar and Anthony Anaxagorou.
For further details please read our Eligibility Criteria and Terms & Conditions and take a look at our FAQs here.
If you have any questions not covered in these documents, please email Patricia Ferguson on press@outspokenldn.com and she’ll be happy to help.
“Spread the Word is delighted to be working with Out-Spoken Press on their inaugural development scheme. The scheme actively responds to the needs of emerging poets through providing sustained development, mentoring opportunities and building supportive communities, all of which are vital for poets to take forward their practice and their careers.”
— Ruth Harrison FRSA, Director of Spread the Word
“Our work at New Writing North thrives on original and dynamic partnerships and we’re always looking for ways to deepen and enhance the developmental support we offer to writers. We’re proud to be working with Out-Spoken Press to create an opportunity that is fresh and distinctive, offering a potentially transformative mentoring programme that allows poets the time and creative headspace they need to bring their work to fruition and benefit their long-term practice.”
— Will Mackie, Project Manager of the Northern Writers’ Awards
Our Partners
We’re delighted to be working with Spread the Word and New Writing North to offer these opportunities:
Spread the Word is London’s writer development agency, a charity and a National Portfolio client of Arts Council England. It is funded to help London’s writers make their mark on the page, the screen and in the world and build strategic partnerships to foster a literature ecology which reflects the cultural diversity of contemporary Britain. Spread the Word has a national and international reputation for initiating change-making research and developing programmes for writers that have equity and soi launched Rethinking ‘Diversity’ in Publishing by Dr Anamik Saha and Dr Sandra van Lente, Goldsmiths, University of London, in partnership with The Bookseller and Words of Colour. Spread the Word’s programmes include: the Young People’s Laureate for London, the London Writers Awards and the Wellcome Collection x Spread the Word Awards. T: @STWevents
New Writing North is the literature development agency for the North of England and have supported writers since 1996. They administer the Northern Writers’ Awards, which support new work-in-progress and are the country’s biggest writer development programme, The Gordon Burn Prize & run several talent development programmes for writers, including mentoring, professional development & introductions to agents, broadcasters & other commissioners.
Sandeep Parmar was born in Nottingham, England, in 1979 and raised in Southern California. She holds a PhD from the University College London and an MA in creative writing from the University of East Anglia. She is the author of two collections of poetry: Eidolon (Shearsman Books, 2015), winner of the Ledbury Forte Prize, and The Marble Orchard (Shearsman Books, 2012). She is also the author of Reading Mina Loy’s Autobiographies: Myth of the Modern Woman (Bloomsbury Academic, 2013). In 2017, she founded the Ledbury Emerging Poetry Critics Scheme for BAME reviewers. She is a professor of english literature at the University of Liverpool.
Anthony Anaxagorou is a British-born Cypriot poet, fiction writer, essayist, publisher and poetry educator. His poetry has been published in POETRY, The Poetry Review, Poetry London, New Statesman, Granta, and elsewhere. His work has also appeared on BBC Newsnight, BBC Radio 4, ITV, Vice UK, Channel 4 and Sky Arts. His third collection, Heritage Aesthetics, published with Granta Poetry in 2022, won the RSL Ondaatje Prize 2023 and was shortlisted for the Anglo-Hellenic League’s Runciman Award. It was listed as one of New Statesman’s top books of 2022. His second collection After the Formalities published with Penned in the Margins is a Poetry Book Society Recommendation and was shortlisted for the 2019 T.S Eliot Prize along with the 2021 Ledbury Munthe Poetry Prize for Second Collections. It was also a Telegraph and Guardian poetry book of the year. In 2020 he published How To Write It with Merky Books. He was awarded the 2019 H-100 Award for writing and publishing, and the 2015 Groucho Maverick Award for his poetry and fiction. In 2019 he was made an honorary fellow of the University of Roehampton. Anthony is artistic director of Out-Spoken, a monthly poetry and music night held at London’s Southbank Centre, and publisher of Out-Spoken Press.
We are grateful to have received financial support from Arts Council England.
