The 2027 Poetry Business Pamphlet Competition will open for entries soon.
The Poetry Business is delighted to announce that we will be running our usual Book and Pamphlet Competition as two separate strands this year: The Poetry Business Pamphlet Competition and the 40th Anniversary Collection Competition. This will allow us to publish our competition-winning pamphlets as usual and to publish a full collection by the winner of the collection competition.
The 2027 Poetry Business Pamphlet Competition is open internationally to all writers at any stage in their careers. The two winning pamphlets are beautifully produced and promoted widely, and entered for all eligible awards and prizes. They are also sold in bookshops throughout the UK and through online stockists of The Poetry Business publications.
Our long-standing International Book & Pamphlet Competition will return next year. The Book & Pamphlet Competition was the first of its kind in Britain and has launched the careers of many well-established and successful poets, including Selima Hill, Michael Laskey, Daljit Nagra, Pascale Petit, Catherine Smith and Kim Moore.
The Judge: Andrew McMillan
Andrew McMillan is the author of three poetry collections, a novel and the co-editor of the anthology 100 Queer Poems. His work has been widely translated across Europe, and has won the Guardian First Book Award, the only poetry collection to ever do so, as well as a Somerset Maugham Award, an Eric Gregory Award, the Polari Prize and a Northern Writers’ Award, amongst others. He has been shortlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize, The Forward Prizes and the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year. He is Professor of Contemporary Writing at Manchester Metropolitan University and a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He was appointed an MBE for Services to Literature in 2026. A fourth collection, partings, will be published in February 2027.
Ann and Peter Sansom are directors of The Poetry Business and editors of The North magazine and Smith|Doorstop books. Ann’s publications include Romance and In Praise of Men & Other People (Bloodaxe) and Peter’s include Writing Poems (Bloodaxe) and Selected Poems (Carcanet).