The Nature and Place Poetry Competition 2025

The Nature and Place Poetry Competition 2025, organized by The Rialto poetry magazine, is now open for entries. It invites poets over the age of 18 to submit works exploring any aspect of nature and place.

About the Competition

This competition welcomes poems that reflect a wide interpretation of the theme of nature and place, as guided by judge Helen Mort, a poet, novelist, and non-fiction writer. Helen Mort's works include Division Street, No Map Could Show Them, and The Illustrated Woman, published by Chatto & Windus. Her memoir A Line Above The Sky won the Boardman Tasker Prize and the Banff Grand Prize in Canada. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and a Professor of Creative Writing at Manchester Metropolitan University.

The winners will be notified in May, and the full list of winners and long-listed contestants will be published on The Rialto website.

Submission Details

• Theme: Nature and place, with a wide interpretation.

• Length: Poems must not exceed 40 lines (excluding the title and stanza breaks).

• Format: Typed in black ink on one side of A4 paper.

• Language: Poems must be written in English.

• File Types: Submissions should be in Adobe PDF or Microsoft Word (.doc or .docx).

  
  

Who Can Enter?

The competition is open to anyone over the age of 18.

Prizes

• 1st Prize: £1,000

• 2nd Prize: £500

• 3rd Prize: £250

  
  

Entry Fees

• First Poem: £7 (includes an administration fee)

• Each Subsequent Poem: £4 (per poem, when submitted in a batch of up to six poems)