Poetry Contest
Quick answer: A poetry contest is a competition where poems are judged against set criteria for prizes or publication. Learn how contests work and how to enter well.
A poetry contest is a competition in which submitted poems are judged, usually anonymously, against criteria such as imagery, structure, emotional force and engagement with a theme, with prizes, publication or both awarded to the winners. Contests range from free monthly competitions to major book prizes with reading fees, and they exist at every level, from school anthologies to international awards that can change a career.
Poets enter contests for reasons beyond the prize money. A deadline forces a poem to be finished; a placement gives a young publication history its first landmark; and a longlist or shortlist mention is a public signal that strangers, reading blind, found the work worth keeping. Even a near miss teaches you something a folder of drafts never will.
How Judging Usually Works
Most contests run in rounds. Screening readers cut the entries to a longlist, editors or a named judge refine that to a shortlist, and the final judge ranks the winners. Judging is typically blind, meaning names are stripped from poems before anyone reads them, so reputation buys nothing. Criteria vary, but creativity, emotion, structure, language and theme cover most scoring sheets; Writory's monthly contest scores entries on exactly those five, opens on the 1st, closes on the 25th and returns a score to every single entrant on the 30th, which makes it a useful low-stakes testing ground.
Reading the Rules Before You Enter
Contest rules are a contract, and the poets who skip them lose on technicalities. Check the line limit, the theme if one is set, whether previously published work is eligible, whether simultaneous submissions are allowed, what rights the organiser takes over winning poems, and whether there is an entry fee. A fee is not automatically a red flag; established prizes use fees to pay judges and winners. A contest that takes all rights to every entry, however, deserves your suspicion and not your poem.
Giving Your Poem Its Best Chance
Judges read fast, so the opening lines carry unfair weight. Send the poem whose first sentence you would defend against anyone, not the poem you spent longest on. If there is a theme, approach it from the side rather than head on; when three hundred poems address grief through rain, the one set in a bright kitchen gets remembered. Finally, follow the formatting instructions exactly, because a poem in the wrong file format can be eliminated before a human ever reads it.
What poets can take from this
- Read the full rules twice, once before writing and once before submitting.
- Enter the poem with the strongest opening lines, since early impressions dominate fast judging.
- Take themes at a slant; the obvious treatment arrives in the judge's inbox three hundred times.
- Keep a record of what you entered where, so an acceptance elsewhere never creates a rights clash.
- Treat longlists and near misses as data, not verdicts, and send the poem out again.
Try it yourself
Set yourself a private contest: theme, forty-line limit, and a deadline five days from now. Write the entry, then judge it against five criteria, creativity, emotion, structure, language and theme, giving marks out of ten, and revise the weakest category before you send it anywhere real.
Questions
Are poetry contests with entry fees legitimate?
Many are; fees commonly fund the prize pot and pay judges. Warning signs are different: vague rules, no named organiser, rights grabs over all entries, or prizes that only exist if enough people pay.
What are my realistic chances of winning a poetry contest?
Large contests receive hundreds or thousands of entries, so any single entry is a long shot. Consistent entry with strong, carefully matched poems improves the odds enormously, and longlist placements accumulate into a real track record.
Can I submit the same poem to a contest and a journal at the same time?
Only if both allow simultaneous submissions, so check both sets of rules. If the poem is accepted or wins in one place, withdraw it from the other immediately.
By the Writory editorial team, reviewed by working poets. Updated July 2026.
Enter a Writory poetry contest
Enter the September contest and have your own poem read and scored. That first entry makes you a Writorian.