Poetry Competitions Closing Soon

Three poetry competitions closing very soon, all from the west of Ireland. In her post here Emerging Writer talks about the ROI of competitions - return for investment, entry fee versus prizes. Judge yourself from the details below.

iYeats Poetry Competition

To celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Yeats summer school and the 70th anniversary of the death of WB Yeats, the Hawk's Well Theatre Sligo announces the inaugural iYeats Poetry Competition 2009 - an online national and international competition open to all and with a special award for poetry from poets under 25. Prize giving and a Public reading of the shortlisted poets will take place during the annual Yeats Summer School 2009.

The twin themes of the iYeats Poetry Competition 2009 will be POLITICS and LOVE. Poems will be accepted on these subjects with closing date of June 12th 2009. Entry fee is 5 euro anf first prize is 300 euro. Maximum length 40 lines. Full details here.

I don't have many poems on either politics or love but using a very broad definition of love I might enter one or two.

Boyle Arts Festival Poetry Competition 2009

Closing date for entries, 15th June 2009. €5 per poem. Prizes are €300 for the winning poem and €50 for the four runners up. Prizes will be awarded on Sunday 26th July at a ceremony during the Boyle Arts Festival. Maximum length 40 lines. Details here.

One of our writing group, Brendan Carey Kinane, won this competition two years ago and I had a poem highly commended so I'll certainly enter this again. Different judge this time of course.

Leyney Writers Tubbercurry Festival

Leyney Writers in Tubbercurry, Co Sligo are accepting entries to their fourth annual writing competition. There are three categories: short story, free verse or rhyming verse. Prizes are: €100 or €50 in each category. The entry fee is €10 per entry. The story word limit is 1,500 words; poetry limit is 200 lines. Post to Tubbercurry Literary Festival, Short Story Competition, Leyney Writers, 25 Ballina Road, Tubbercurry, Co. Sligo. Closing date for entries is June 13, 2009. More details here. That poetry line limit is very unusual and I think I'll send them a 110 line sequence I completed recently based on the Leixlip Bridge Eucharistic congress road accident I blogged about some time ago here.

My main cribs with competitions are the inability to enter online especially for competitions abroad where sending the fee is then a problem and the fact that many competition websites never announce the results of the competition. Only the iYeats competition above has online entering. Some competitions insist on only accepting entries by hard copy but allow online payment by PayPal or similar. Use the possibilities of the internet!