On November 1st 2021, Wolverhampton Literature Festival opens its poetry competition to poets from across the globe for the fifth consecutive year. Last year’s competition was our most successful to date, and we’re happy to say this has allowed us to increase the amount we give out in prizes. This year, the value of the three 3rd prizes goes up from £25 to £50, and we’re also including a new prize category for poems sent in by people living in a WV postcode. These poems will be eligible for the main prizes, but in addition one WV poem will win £75, with two more getting runners-up prizes of £25.
The 2022 festival takes place over the weekend of 4-6 February, and the theme for both the festival and the competition is ‘Sounds of the city’. Take us to your market, offer us high street haiku, sing the praises of your local bus. Send us stories of sirens, sonnets to seagulls on rooftops, sagas about drunks singing their way home. Surprise us with what the sounds of the city mean to you, and send your entries in before December 31st!
Poems will be read, and winners chosen, by our judge Casey Bailey, a writer, performer and educator born and raised in Nechells, Birmingham, and current Birmingham Poet Laureate (photo of Casey attached).
Please visit http://www.wolvesliteraturefestival.co.uk/competition.html for more details of the competition, and follow the festival’s Twitter and Facebook accounts to keep updated on all the festival programming.
