The Sentinel Poetry Book Competition 2018 closes its entries for full poetry collections by single authors on July 31sr. For the first stage of this competition, poets of all nationalities, living in any part of the world are invited to submit 20 pages of poetry in English Language, on any subject, in any style. Three collections will be published by SPM Publications in the second quarter of 2019.
Each of the three winners will receive 20 complimentary copies of his or her collection. The competitions will be judged by Noel Williams, author of Out of Breath and Point Me at the Stars.
Prizes: Standard publishing contracts plus
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First – £300
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Second – £200
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Third – £100
The First Stage
For the first stage of the competition, entrants submit 20 A4 pages of poetry, single-spaced and in Garamond 12 points, that will form part of the final collection.
– The 20 pages may be made up of any number of poems, of any length, on any subject.
– Every poem must start on a new page. (Don’t squeeze two or more poems on a page, even if they are short poems).
– All poems submitted for this stage of the competition must be previously unpublished.
– The collections should be submitted under Pen Names. The Pen Names must be new and not previously used by the authors in publishing work elsewhere.
– The Cover Notes should have both the author’s real and pen names.
The submission deadline for The First Stage is 31-July-2018
The Shortlist
A shortlist of five collections will be announced on 15-October-2018
The Second Stage
Authors of the five shortlisted collections will be invited to submit their full collections. The full collections may include poems previously published in magazines, journals or in multi-author anthologies, and may include poems that have won or have been commended in other competitions.
-The minimum length of the full collection should be 54 A4 pages, and the maximum length will be 86 A4 pages.
The submission deadline for The Second Stage is 15-November-2018
The winners will be announced on 17th December 2018
Publication Schedule:
The third-prized book will be published on 30th April 2019
The second-prized book will be published on 31st May 2019
and the first-prized book will be published on 15th June 2019
Joint book launch
The three prize-winning books will be jointly launched in London on Saturday, 29th June, 2019.
About the Judge
Noel Williams is the author of Out of Breath (Cinnamon 2014) and Point Me at the Stars (Indigo Dreams, 2017), as well as academic books about writing. His poetry has been published widely in the UK as well as in the USA, Mexico and India. His work has been commended or shortlisted in dozens of competitions and he’s won quite a few prizes, including several in Sentinel Poetry competitions. He has been nominated for the Forward Prize four times, and once for the Pushcart Prize. He was the first Poet in Residence at Sheffield’s Bank Street Arts Centre, where he’s also exhibited several times, together with exhibitions in several other galleries in Yorkshire. He’s co-editor of Antiphon magazine (antiphon.org.uk), Reviews Editor for Orbis (www.orbisjournal.com) and recently edited the anthology Millstone Grit (Antiphon Press 2016), as well as being a mentor for other successful writers and a reviewer for various magazines such as The North and Envoi. He’s also Professor Emeritus of Sheffield Hallam University.
Abegail Morley 