The Welsh Poetry Competition - international Anglo-Welsh poetry competitions

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.

The 1st prize giving evening @ Pontypridd Library, 2007
Photograph by Andrew Davies

It is obvious, after our first four years, that our competition is here to stay, and with entries from as far a field as Abu Dhabi, Australia, Belgium, Canada, Corfu, Denmark, England, France, Ireland, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, Israel, Kenya, Kuwait, New Zealand, Portugal, Scotland, Spain and the USA as well as Wales, the Welsh Poetry Competition is already 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 for the following year. That way, prize money will be directly proportional to the amount of entries - the more entries the bigger the prizes! 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 takes 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.

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 come 4th, 5th or 20th in our competition. As opposed to coming 4th in some other competitions but never knowing, getting disheartened and even giving up when obviously there is great talent there!

In just over 4 years we've had over 62,400 hits & 21,700 visitors on our website and this is set to grow and grow as the competition starts to reach further afield.

The Usual Suspects? - Winners from 2008 prize giving night
Photograph by Andrew Davies