Your First Poetry Contest Entry: A Full Walkthrough
Quick answer: Your first poetry contest entry, step by step: choosing the poem, reading the rules, formatting, submitting and what actually happens on results day.
Somewhere on your device is a poem you have reread more than twice, and somewhere online is a contest closing this month. The distance between those two facts is about forty minutes of careful work, yet first-time entrants routinely stall for a year at exactly this point. Not because entering is hard, but because it is unfamiliar, and the imagination fills unfamiliarity with dread: what if the formatting is wrong, what if everyone else is better, what if the whole thing is a scam?
This walkthrough removes the unfamiliarity by doing the entire journey once, slowly, with nothing skipped: choosing the poem, vetting the contest, reading the rules the way a proofreader would, preparing the file, moving through a real submission flow using Writory's monthly contest as the worked example, and then the strange quiet weeks between pressing submit and reading results. By the end, entering a contest should feel like what it actually is: posting a letter, not sitting an exam.
Before you touch the form
Two decisions come before any website: which poem, and which contest. For the poem, pick finished over new. A finished poem is one that has rested at least a couple of weeks, survived a read-aloud without making you wince, and has an ending you chose rather than one you ran out of steam at. First entries fail most often because the poet submits the poem they wrote last night, still warm and still glowing falsely.
For the contest, vet before you commit. A trustworthy contest shows you three things without being asked: how judging works, who won before, and exactly what winning gets you. A monthly contest is an ideal first arena because the stakes per entry are low and the loop is short; Writory's, for example, opens entries on the 1st of each month, closes on the 25th, publishes results on the 30th, and shows every entrant their score across five criteria. Whatever contest you choose, confirm the entry window and any fee now, before you invest an evening in preparing the entry.
Read the rules like a proofreader
Every contest has a rules or terms page, and reading it completely is the single highest-value ten minutes in this whole process. You are hunting for numbers and conditions: maximum line count or word count, one poem or several per entry, whether the poem must be previously unpublished, whether a theme is set and how strictly, the exact closing date and time, and what rights the contest takes in winning poems. Write these down; do not trust memory on deadline day.
Pay special attention to two clauses beginners miss. The originality clause: your entry must be entirely your own work, and contests do check, so a borrowed stanza or a lightly reworded famous poem ends worse than a weak original. And the publication clause: if the contest requires unpublished work, a poem posted on your public social media may already count as published under some definitions. When any clause is ambiguous, email the organiser and keep the reply. Organisers answer these questions all the time and respect entrants who ask.
Prepare the poem and its details
Format for invisibility: the goal is that judges notice your images, never your document. A clean readable font, sensible size, single poem, stanza breaks exactly as you intend them. Check the poem against the line limit by counting lines yourself, including or excluding blank lines according to how the rules define a line, and when unsure, stay comfortably under. If judging is blind, remove your name from the poem text and the file name.
Then prepare the small texts around the poem. The title deserves ten minutes of real thought; 'Untitled' and label-titles like 'Sadness' squander the one line every judge is guaranteed to read. If the form asks for a short bio, two or three plain sentences are perfect, and having no credits yet is completely normal; write who you are and what you write, not apologies. If there is an optional note or description field, use it only for what it asks. Nobody has ever won on a bio, but entrants have annoyed judges with three-paragraph explanations of their own metaphors.
The submit flow, step by step
Online contest forms differ in decoration but rarely in skeleton. Using Writory's flow as the demonstration, the walk looks like this, and almost any contest you enter will rhyme with it:
Total time, once your poem is ready: perhaps fifteen minutes. If the contest charges a fee, the payment step sits before final confirmation, which is one more reason not to leave entry to the closing hours, when payment hiccups have no time to be fixed.
After you press submit
The correct move now is strategic forgetting. Note the results date in your calendar, file the confirmation email, and start the next poem. What you must not do is reread your entry nightly, because you will find a comma to regret by day three and a stanza by day six; poems under review always degrade in their author's eyes, and none of that degradation is real. Most contests, quite reasonably, do not accept revised versions after submission.
Use the waiting weeks to build the habit that separates poets who grow from poets who wait: a second poem in progress. One entry a month, drafted, rested, revised and submitted, is a complete apprenticeship running twelve times a year. The first entry is the hard one; the fifth is routine, and somewhere around then you stop entering to find out if you are good and start entering to find out if this poem is finished, which is the far more useful question.
Results day, and what to do with it
On results day you will meet one of three outcomes: you placed, you scored mid-field, or you landed lower than hoped. If you placed, take the win completely, tell people, and add the credit to your bio; first placements are rare and worth celebrating without qualification. If not, and statistically most first entries do not place, the value is in whatever feedback exists. In a contest that scores every entry, read your five criterion scores and find the lowest column: that is your next revision assignment, delivered free.
Then read the winning poems slowly, twice: once as a reader, once as a detective asking what they do that yours does not yet. Concreteness, shape and endings are the usual answers. Give yourself forty-eight hours before deciding anything about your own poem, then choose: revise it for a future cycle, send it somewhere it fits better, or shelve it and promote your next-strongest. Any of the three is progress. The only losing move is the one most first-timers make, which is never entering again.
Your next seven days
Today: pick your most-finished poem and the contest you will enter, and read its full rules. Day two: format the poem, count the lines, write the real title. Day three: complete the entry and submit, well inside the window. Days four to seven: begin the next poem. One week, one entry, one draft in progress; do that monthly and by this time next year you will have twelve entries, twelve rounds of feedback, and a shelf of poems that exist because deadlines made you finish them. That shelf is the actual prize.
What poets can take from this
- Enter a rested, finished poem, never the one you drafted this week.
- Copy the key rules, limits, theme, deadline, rights, into your own notes before entering.
- Give the poem a real title; it is the one line every judge reads.
- Check that stanza breaks survived the paste or upload before submitting.
- Submit days before the deadline and keep the confirmation as proof.
- Start the next poem the day after you enter; do not reread the submitted one.
Try it yourself
Write a poem titled with the exact time of day you finally do something you postponed, and let the poem be about the postponing, not the doing.
Questions
What should I check before entering my first poetry contest?
Vet the contest first: named judges or a described judging process, past winners you can read, and clearly stated prizes. Then read the full rules and note the line limit, theme, deadline with timezone, fee if any, and what rights the contest takes in winning poems.
Do I need publishing credits to enter a poetry contest?
No. Contests judge the poem in front of them, and blind judging means the judge usually cannot see your bio at all. An empty bio is normal for a first entry; two plain sentences about who you are is all any form needs.
What happens after I submit a poem to a contest?
Your entry waits with the rest of the field until judging, so file your confirmation and start writing something new. On results day, read any feedback or scores you receive, study the winning poems, and decide within the week whether your poem gets revised, resubmitted elsewhere, or shelved.
By the Writory editorial team, reviewed by working poets. Updated September 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.