The Bridport Prize 2015
RODGER McGough, one of Britain's best loved
poets and presenter of Radio 4's Poetry Please, has laid down a challenge to
writers by inviting them to write a poem that he will wish he'd written himself.
Roger made his challenge as part of his role as Poetry Judge for this year's
prestigious Bridport Prize competition.
He has also made a short film to encourage writers to send in their entries. In
it he says it takes courage to enter your writing into competitions, but that he
hopes lots of writers will do and he is looking forward to reading the poems.
The film can be seen on
YouTube.
The Bridport Prize, established in 1973 is one of the best known 'open'
writing competitions in the English language, meaning both new and established
writers are eligible to submit work. It regularly attracts entries from as far
away as the USA, Australia and New Zealand.
There are 4 categories to the competition:- Poetry (up to 42 lines max); short
stories (up to 5,000 words); flash fiction (very short stories of 250 words
max.) and the Peggy Chapman-Andrews Award for a First Novel (the opening
chapters of a novel up to 8,000 words max.)
The judges for 2015 are Roger McGough for poetry and award-winning writers Jane
Rogers for short stories, David Gaffney for flash fiction and Jane Feaver for
novels.
The competition offers top prizes of £5,000 in the poetry and short story
categories, £1,000 in the flash fiction and £1,000 plus up to a year's mentoring
from project partners The Literary Consultancy for the winner of the PC-A novel
award.
The winning poems, short stories and flash fiction stories are published in a
Winners Anthology in the autumn and the winner and runner up in the novel award
will have their opening chapters published on the Bridport Prize website.
The competition closing date is 31 May 2015, so there are still a couple of
weeks to submit your poems and stories. Entries can be made
online or by post by downloading an application and sending it
to the address on the form.
Winners will be notified by mid September and formally announced at the Bridport
prize-giving and online on 17 October 2015.
The Bridport Prize is the flagship project of Bridport Arts Centre in Dorset and
raises vital funds for the Centre's work.
