Sole Judge: Rory Waterman
who will read all entries
Closing date for entries. Midnight, 30th August 2025.
1st prize-£600. Runner-up- £300. 5 x commended-£50 each.
The Gloucestershire Prize- £200. (for Gloucestershire residents only).
Rory Waterman was born in Belfast in 1981, grew up in Lincolnshire, and lives in Nottingham. He has published four collections with Carcanet Press: Tonight the Summer's Over (2013), which was a PBS Recommendation and was shortlisted for the Seamus Heaney Prize; Sarajevo Roses (2017), shortlisted for the Ledbury Forte Prize; Sweet Nothings (2020); and Come Here to This Gate (2024). He also co-edits New Walk Editions and writes regularly for the TLS, PN Review, and elsewhere. He is Associate Professor of Modern and Contemporary Literature at Nottingham Trent University. Website: www.rorywaterman.com.
Entry fees: Postal entries; £4 per poem or 3 poems for £10.
Email entries will carry a surcharge for admin & printing costs. For postal entries, go to https://tinyurl.com/buzzwordspostalentry to download the entry form and instructions. Please download or print the form, do not type into it or it changes for everyone!
Proceeds of the competition will be used to fund ‘Buzzwords’, which is the longest running and most respected regular poetry gathering in Cheltenham.
Rules of Entry.
1. Poems should be no longer than 70 lines, not counting title or blank spaces.
2. No translations are accepted.
3. Poems must not have been previously published in print or on the internet.
4. Entries must be clearly typed on single side(s) of A4 paper in a clear font e.g. Arial 12 point. No curly or obscure fonts please. One poem per page.
5. Please leave a reasonable margin on the paper so that it is legible when printed and filed.
6. Handwritten entries will not be considered.
7. Entrants’ names should not appear on the poems. An entry form or email should accompany all entries and contain name, phone number, address, email address and titles of poems entered.
8. Entries must be received by midnight on 30th August
9. Entries for the Gloucestershire prize should mark their poems with ‘GL’ in the top right hand corner.
10. Gloucestershire, for the purposes of the competition, includes South Gloucestershire
11. Results will also be published on the Buzzwords Competition Website.
12. Prize winners will be contacted in October 2025; winners will be welcome to read their poems at the next ‘Buzzwords’
13. The judge’s decision will be final and we regret that no correspondence will be entered into.
14. Copyright will remain with the competitor, but Buzzwords reserves the right to publish the winning poems on the website, or to use them in publicity, for 12 months after the results are announced.
16. Poems may not be altered after entry.
Email entry instructions
Pay for the appropriate number of poems through the paypal button below. Please note, you do not have to have a paypal account and can use a debit card through paypal.
Send the poems, one per page, as an attachment to buzzwords.poetry@gmail.com . No name or identifying marks on the poems, except for ‘GL’ on the top right-hand corner if you are a Gloucestershire entrant.
In the body of the email, include the paypal receipt or transaction number, name, phone number, address, email address and titles of poems entered.
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