Poetry Contest Jamaica 2026, Caribbean Poets
Quick answer: Monthly poetry contest for Jamaican poets. Dub poetry, spoken word and free verse welcome, in English or Patois. Cash prizes, certificates, real scores.
Jamaica changed what poetry could sound like. Louise Bennett-Coverley made Jamaican Creole a literary language while the schools were still calling it broken English, Claude McKay carried the island into the Harlem Renaissance, and dub poets including Oku Onuora, Mikey Smith, Jean Binta Breeze and Mutabaruka set the word against the riddim. Mervyn Morris and Lorna Goodison have both held the post of Poet Laureate, and Calabash at Treasure Beach draws readers from everywhere. Writory runs a competition every month, open from the 1st to the 25th.
Winners are named on the 30th and receive cash prizes, and every entrant is issued a participation certificate. Poems are scored on five criteria, emotion, language, creativity, theme and structure, with each poet's figures kept in their profile. Patois entries are accepted exactly as written, as is English or any other language, and poets can enter from the age of 13. The contest has received poems from more than 50 countries, and a Jamaican entry is read among every one of them.
Jamaican poets can take Writory's monthly competition in Patois or in English, with cash prizes, a certificate for every entrant and a visible score on each poem.
Why enter
- Patois is treated as a language and not a mistake. A poem in Jamaican Creole is scored on what it achieves, not on how far it sits from standard English.
- Dub and performance work is welcome on the page, and rhythm registers under language and structure instead of being lost in print.
- There is a fresh contest every month, so a poem written after a Kingston open mic has somewhere to go the same week.
- Jamaicans overseas enter on the same footing, which matters for a diaspora spread across Britain, Canada and the United States.
- Every entrant leaves with a certificate and a score, whether or not the poem reaches the top ten.
What winners and entrants receive
- Cash prizes go to the poems that finish highest each month.
- A participation certificate is sent to every Jamaican who enters.
- Winning clears the fee on your next month's entry.
- Three months of entering back to back also earns a free entry.
- The ten poems that score highest are posted publicly on the monthly leaderboard.
Dub poetry, performance pieces set down on the page, Patois verse, reggae and ska inflected rhythm, sonnets, haiku and free verse are all accepted.
Key facts
- Entries open the 1st, close the 25th at 11:59 PM IST, results on the 30th.
- One poem $5, two poems $8, five poems $15 (Rs 150 / Rs 220 / Rs 450 in India).
- Every poem scored by human judges on five criteria: creativity, emotion, structure, language and theme.
- A participation certificate for every entrant, not only winners, and the score is visible in your profile.
- Cash prizes for winners, free entry the following month for winners, open worldwide from age 13, any language.
Questions
Can I send in a poem written in Patois?
Yes, and you should if that is the poem's language. Writory accepts any language and does not standardise entries, so the spelling and the rhythm you chose stay as you wrote them. Entrants must be 13 or older.
Who judges, and how do I know a dub piece gets a fair reading?
Every entry, dub or lyric or sonnet, meets the same five criteria: emotion, creativity, language, structure and theme. Because the figures are published to your profile, you can see how the poem was read instead of guessing at it.
How much do I pay to enter from Jamaica?
Fees are in US dollars. One poem is $5, two poems come to $8 and five poems come to $15. Winners are exempt the next month, and anyone entering three months in succession earns a free entry as well.
When do I find out the result?
Submissions stop on the 25th and the result is posted on the 30th. Winners and the top ten go up publicly, and your criteria scores go into your profile.
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By the Writory editorial team. Updated July 2026.
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