On November 1st 2025, Wolverhampton Literature Festival opens its poetry competition to poets from across the globe for the ninth consecutive year. The competition this year will once again be an ‘open’ one, so send us poems on whatever subject you like. Surprise us, enthral us, astound us, but make sure you send your entries in before December 31st!

1st prize for this competition is £400. 2nd prize, £150. There are three 3rd prizes of £25. There is an additional prize of £50 for the best poem sent in by someone living in a WV postcode. You’ll find details of how to submit, and the rules for the competition, further down the page. Please read them carefully. Poems will be read, and winners chosen, by our judges Martin Figura and Helen Ivory. The WV postcode winner will be chosen by Steve Pottinger.

Our Judges

Martin Figura’s collection and show Whistle were shortlisted for the Ted Hughes Award and won the 2013 Saboteur Award for Best Spoken Word Show. In 2021 he was Salisbury NHS Writer in Residence; the resulting pamphlet My Name is Mercy (Fair Acre Press) won a national NHS award. His latest collection The Remaining Men was published by Cinnamon Press in 2024.

Helen Ivory is a poet and visual artist. Her sixth Bloodaxe Books collection Constructing a Witch, was published in 2025 and was a Poetry Book Society recommendation. She edits Ink Sweat and Tears and teaches creative writing online for the Poetry School. She has work translated into Polish, Ukrainian, Spanish, Croatian and Greek for Versopolis, and was awarded a Cholmondeley Award by the Society of Authors in 2024.

A note from Martin & Helen on judging the WoLF poetry competition

What we look for is to be taken into poems which create their own world and surprise us with their imagination. Emotion should be earned and real, and carried by the language.

We’ll have read the winning poems several times before we come to a decision. It will be the poems still holding our attention by that stage which will make the final cut.

Good luck!!

Enter here