Over the past year, I’ve read poems for a few different prizes – both as sole judge, and as unnamed sifter. This means that over the past twelve months or so, I’ve read a LOT of poems.
Read them, and judged them.
I often talk about how subjective poetry prizes are – which is true. So much depends on the tastes of the judge, or just how a particular poem hits at the particular time of judging. Whether a poem scrapes into the bottom of a shortlist, or gets lauded as the winner, might be purely a matter of timing. Especially if it’s a big competition, with thousands of entries, there’s likely to be very little difference in skill between the top dozen or so entries.
So let’s be clear from the outside: I have no idea what makes a prize-winning poem. If I did, I’d be winning all the prizes.
What I can tell you are some of the things that lead to a poem being instantly discarded. I can also make a few observations about patterns, which may or may not prove useful.
Let’s start with some top tips for submitting to poetry competitions:
1 - Follow the rules!
If it says to submit anonymously, don’t put your name on your entry. Not ‘by Katie Hale’ at the end of the poem. Not in a header or footer. Not even in the file title. Recently, I sifted for a competition whose policy was to disqualify anyone who broke this rule – and I ended up having to discard about 10% of the entries as a result.
2 - Pay attention to word counts.
If the word count is 500 words, don’t submit 1500. If it says to submit just one poem, don’t submit three. (Alternatively, if it’s a competition for pamphlets, don’t submit a single two-page poem.)
Some competitions will have a minimum word count – though not all. But if you’re submitting well below the maximum word count, then your poem had better pack a real punch for its size. For instance, if the word limit is 500 words, and you’re submitting a poem that’s only 25 words long, you’re unlikely to succeed. Not unless each of those 25 words is pulling the weight of 20 words. Not unless your poem is really going to stand out from the crowd.
3 - If there’s a theme, make sure your poem actually fits it.
It can be at a slant – that’s fine. In fact, some of the best poems approach their themes from sideways on. (If you go for the obvious approach, chances are a hundred other people will have done the same thing, and your poem won’t stand out from the crowd.) But make sure the theme is genuine. Make sure it fits. I’ve read multiple poems for themed submissions, where I’m convinced the poet has just taken their best poem, and slapped the theme word in somewhere towards the end. Please don’t do this. It’ll stand out like a sore thumb, and the poem will be worse as a result.
4 - For the love of all that’s holy, read some poetry!
In a couple of the competitions I’ve judged, I’ve been given a writer’s statement alongside the poem(s). This is usually a chance for the poet to talk about the themes in the work, why it’s important to them, what they’re trying to achieve – and sometimes also what they’ve written / published / achieved in the past. A not insignificant number of these said something like: ‘I’ve never written anything before but I thought poetry would be a good way to channel my emotions.’
Now let me get something clear: I think it’s great if people use poetry as a way to explore their emotions. I love that writing can be therapeutic. I think it’s awesome that different people can have different goals for their writing. If you want to win the T S Eliot Prize? Give it a shot! If you want to use poetry to figure out how you feel about your new neighbour? Great!
Personally, when I’m feeling overwhelmed, I crochet, or I go for a swim. I’m not a very good crocheter, and I’m not a very good swimmer. But that’s ok – I’m not trying to win an Olympic gold medal. I’m just trying to do lengths until I can sort my head out.
But if I did want to enter a swimming competition – even just one at the local pool – I’m aware I’d have to train. I’d have to practice swimming more than I do now. I’d probably have to watch other people swimming, to see what I could learn from their technique. In other words, I couldn’t just rock up at the pool one day and hope to win.
It’s the same with writing. If you’re writing poems just for yourself, then great! Keep going! Write because it’s fun! But if you want to get published in a professional capacity, or if you want win a competition, then you have to read other people’s poems. You have to work on your own craft. To use sporting language, you have to train.
How to win a poetry competition:
Ok, so now we’ve figured out what’s going to get our work instantly discarded – and hopefully worked to prevent that – how about the other end of the scale? How can we make sure our poems rise to the top of the pile?
As I’ve said, there really is no easy fix for this. If your craft is good, then you’re already going to catch a judge’s eye – and beyond that, it’s largely subjective. All I can do is talk about the poems and pamphlets that have stood out to me:
1 - Poems that had a sense of urgency.
I’ve read so many technically good poems, where I absolutely believe that the poet understands their craft – but I’m just not sure what the poem is saying, or why they’re saying it. My wife is a teacher, and she talks about an educational philosophy called ‘why this, why now?’ Basically, why are we bothering to do this particular activity with the pupils, and why are we doing it at this point in the lesson? What’s it leading to? She argues that in order for a lesson to work, you can’t just make kids do things at random – there has to be a reason, and a follow-through.
In so many poems, I haven’t known why a poet was writing this particular poem. Often, the poem can feel like an exercise. For example, ‘write a poem about an animal’ or ‘write a poem where someone is looking out of the window’. These can be great exercises to do, to practise our craft, but unless they lead to something more urgent buried underneath, they’re unlikely to win a prize.
2 - Poems where the poet had thought about form and structure.
This links to craft, but in a lot of poems, I got the sense that the form and structure of the poems was accidental. As in, the poet started writing in four-beat lines, and then carried on doing it, even though the poem was pushing to be in iambs, or irregular, or a prose poem. If a poem is a single unbroken block of unmetered verse, I want to feel that it fits the feel of the poem – not that it’s just how the poem came out.
3 - Poems where I didn’t necessarily know where the poem was going to take me, but I absolutely trusted the poet to lead me there.
This is a hard one to pin down, but it has something to do with confidence of voice. That doesn’t mean the tone has to be loud and brazen – but that the reader has to trust the poet to know what they’re doing. The poem has to follow on from itself. Even if there’s a 180 turn in the final line (see James Wright’s ‘Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy’s Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota’), it has to feel inevitable. It has to feel like the poet was leading us there on purpose.
4 - Poems that didn’t give everything up on first reading.
But also weren’t so impenetrable or subjective that there wasn’t a way in for the reader.
The brutal truth is that the judge probably won’t spend very long on your poem – at least, not at first reading. Sometimes, a judge will have literally thousands of poems to read, so if yours isn’t giving them something on their first read through, they’re unlikely to give it a second. I’ve read poems that have clearly been about very personal experiences – but have had so few tangible clues as to what those experiences are, that unless I was there with the poet, I’d have no way of knowing what the poem was about. There’s no way in for an external reader. And unfortunately, that’s who’s reading (and judging) your poems.
Then again, I’ve also read poems that gave up everything at once. These are generally poems that have grabbed me, and left me thinking about them through the first stage of the judging process. Which is great! If you write a poem that lingers in a judge’s mind, that’s a brilliant thing to achieve! But then, when I’ve gone back to it, I’ve found the poem has no more to give. Everything is on the surface of the poem, and I don’t get anything more from reading it a second time. By the time you read it a third time, it starts to feel flat.
Glyn Maxwell talks about this brilliantly in his book On Poetry – about how the best poems work on the surface level, but also on a level beneath.
Other patterns I’ve observed while judging:
1 - The early bird rarely catches the worm.
What I mean by this is that – as a general rule – the earlier the submissions come in, the less good they tend to be. Obviously, this isn’t a hard-and-fast thing. And there are often some real gems in with those early submissions – just as there could be some poems that come in right on the deadline, that get discarded almost straight away.
It’s just a general observation. And speaking to other poets who’ve judged prizes, it seems to be a pretty well-observed pattern.
Why is this? Honestly, who knows? There could be a whole host of reasons. Personally, I think it’s because some people will submit to a competition (or a publisher, or a magazine, or whatever the opportunity might be) the second submissions open. Which often means they haven’t taken the time to read the rules, or to see if this particular opportunity is the right fit for them, or if this is really their best poem for this competition. (There’s a definite overlap between early submissions and lack of following competition rules. Someone else might want to do a statistical study on it – for me, it’s just a general reflection.)
But basically, take the time to read the rules. Take the opportunity to edit your work. Make it as good as possible before you submit.
2 - I discarded a higher proportion of poems whose titles started with ‘the’.
Obviously, I’m not saying you can’t win a competition if your poem’s title starts with ‘the’. But as a general rule, poems called ‘The something-or-other’ were less good than poems with more interesting titles. This isn’t because of the title itself – but because the poets who’d thought about their titles, and who’d really taken time to choose the best possible title for their poem, were also the poets who had really worked on their poems, and made them as good as they could possibly be. Whereas poets who were lazy with their titles were often lazy with their poems as well.
As I say, this isn’t to say you should never start a title with ‘the’. It’s just to say that you should only do it if you’ve thought about the alternatives, and if the ‘the’ title really is the best one for that poem.
When talking about titles, I always recommend Rishi Dastidar’s essay in the Nine Arches book The Craft, where he argues you should never ever call a poem ‘Rain’. If titles are something you struggle with, or something you just haven’t really thought about that much, you should definitely give it a read.
As I say, none of these are hard-and-fast rules. Well, except the one about following the competition’s rules, because otherwise you’re likely to be disqualified, no matter how good the poem is.
They’re all just observations, made by someone who’s read a LOT of poems over the past twelve months.
Ironically, reading all these unpublished poems has meant I haven’t had a lot of time or headspace for reading published ones! So I’m looking forward to getting back to reading some recently published collections. There are so so many that have come out lately, which I’ve only dipped into, or even not had a chance to start at all, and I can’t wait to get back into a habit of reading whole books of poems again.
Let me know if there are any collections you particularly recommend! And also if you have any other tips for submitting to poetry competitions – I’d love to hear them below!
Excellent. This applies equally to submissions to magazines/webzines etc. too. So far, I've been a bit slack on enforcing the criteria for my webzine because I haven't had a massive amount of submissions but if I do, I would tighten them and reject people who can't be bothered to read them. I actually don't enter competitions, not because I probably wouldn't win, but because of the subjective nature of the whole thing. Although I do submit for publication, which make me a bit hypocritical but there's something about the prize money part of competitions that makes me queasy. I'll share this with my poetry group, and on my webzine as a gentle reminder!
Well put, Katie. Saves me
writing it in a magazine editorial (https:/www.pennineplatform.com) where - apart from possibly the early bird aspect, as it can help to see how long something resonates - exactly the same ‘rules’ apply. Thank you.