About us
The first Welsh Poetry Competition was set up by poet & writer Dave Lewis in 2007. Officially launched on St David's Day @ Clwb-Y-Bont, Pontypridd, 2007 the aim is to encourage and foster the wealth of creative writing talent that we know exists in Wales but currently languishes in the doldrums. We aim to inspire people to capture life in the present day and to give a voice to a new generation of poets and writers. We are not interested in purely academic types of literature but would much rather see pure raw passion burst onto the creative writing scene in Wales.
Photograph by
Andrew Davies, 2007
It is obvious, after our first five years, that our competition is here to stay, and with entries from as far a field as Abu Dhabi, Australia, Belgium, Canada, China, Corfu, Denmark, England, France, India, Ireland, Italy, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, Israel, Kenya, Kuwait, New Zealand, Pakistan, Portugal, Scotland, Spain, Thailand and the USA as well as Wales of course, the Welsh Poetry Competition is a truly international competition, accessible to all (through the English language).
As stated at the outset we would like to increase the prize money available to winners and will be investing any profits from each year's competition into prize money and the printing costs for our anthologies. Someone please Facebook America about us :)
It should also be noted that the competition is totally independent and financed purely by the organisers and we receive no grants, bursaries or funding from any external agencies whatsoever. So the London Olympics and Cameron's forthcoming Arts Council cuts don't really effect us then!
You may notice though that we've put some Google Ads at the top of our site. If you click some of the links and visit those sites advertised there we get a small commission. This will hopefully help towards paying for the upkeep (domain & hosting) of the site.
With John Evans judging our first two years and Mike Jenkins judging in 2009 we are already a truly respected competition, that has an honest appreciation of populist, good quality, innovative work. In 2010 John Evans, fresh from the release of his new book - The Acid Real, again took up the reigns as judge and so we were once again assured of a bumper crop of fine entries from many of the country's undiscovered poets. In our fifth year we had our first female judge in Sally Spedding and we once again had a record year with more entries coming in than ever before!
Unlike many competitions we do not filter entries, our judges read every single poem so everyone has the same chance. We also believe in having (naming) as many 'winners' as possible. By having 20 winners each year it is our aim to encourage writers who may have come 4th, 5th etc. in other competitions but who would never know.
We've had over 85,300+ hits & 30,200+ visitors on our web site and this is set to grow and grow as the competition reaches further a field.
In August 2011 we published an anthology of the first five years of winners' poems. To buy a copy of the book or just read more click here.
Photograph by Andrew Davies, 2008
Contact
To contact us for more details about the competition either write to us at:
The Welsh Poetry Competition
9 The Avenue, Pontypridd, CF37 4DF
Or just send us an e-mail by clicking here.
To join our Facebook Group* and post your poems for the world to see and judge, or just chat about poetry or the competition click here.
*Note: You will need your own Facebook account to join in.
To follow us on Twitter**
@welshpoetrycomp
**Note: You will need your own Twitter account to join in.
Press releases
Click below to view our latest press releases:
Misc.
Click below to view more details about our events:
Feel free to download the poster below to advertise the event:
Competition Poster
2011
Rules of Competition
Photograph by
Dave Lewis, 2010
Photography
All photographs by Dave Lewis Photography (unless stated otherwise). All images copyrighted and no unauthorised use permitted.
Further images by Dave Lewis available to purchase from
Picture Nation.
