# National Poetry Competition

The National Poetry Competition is an annual poetry prize established in 1978 in the United Kingdom. It is run by UK-based The Poetry Society and accepts entries from all over the world, with over 10,000 poems being submitted to the competition each year. Winning has been an important milestone in the careers of many well-known poets.
Carol Ann Duffy, the UK Poet Laureate from 2009 to 2019, won in 1983 with "Whoever She Was". Looking back, in 2007 she commented: "in those days, one was still called a 'poetess' – so it meant a lot, as a young woman poet, to begin to try to change that". Christopher James, the 2008 winner, commented "if there is an unspoken Grand Slam circuit for poetry prizes, then the National Poetry Competition is definitely Wimbledon – it's the one everyone dreams of winning". Other prestigious names to have won the competition include Ruth Padel, Jo Shapcott, Sinéad Morrissey, Ian Duhig, Colette Bryce and the poet and novelist Helen Dunmore.
Melanie Drane was the first non-British to win, in 2005.
The competition runs annually, opening in the spring and closing at the end of October. A new team of judges (made up of three respected poets) is announced each year. The first prize is £5,000 and the top three winners are published in Britain's leading poetry magazine, The Poetry Review.

## Winners

| Year | Author | Title |
| 1978 | Michael Hulse | "Dole Queue" |
| 1979 | Medbh McGuckian | "The Flitting" |
| 1980 | Tony Harrison | "Timer" |
| 1981 | James Berry | "Fantasy of an African Boy" |
| 1982 | Philip Gross | "The Ice Factory" |
| 1983 | Carol Ann Duffy | "Whoever She Was" |
| 1984 | Tony Curtis | "The Death of Richard Beattie-Seaman in Belgian Grand Prix, 1939" |
| 1985 | Jo Shapcott | "The Surrealists' Summer Convention Came to Our City" |
| 1986 | Carole Satyamurti | "Between the Lines" |
| 1987 | Ian Duhig | "Nineteen Hundred and Nineteen" |
| 1988 | Martin Reed | "The Widow's Dream" |
| 1989 | William Scammell | "A World Elsewhere" |
| 1990 | Nicky Rice | "Room Service" |
| 1991 | Jo Shapcott | "Phrase Book" |
| 1991 | John Levett | "A Shrunken Head" |
| 1992 | Stephen Knight | "The Mermaid Tank" |
| 1993 | Sam Gardiner | "Protestant Windows" |
| 1994 | David Hart | "The Silkies" |
| 1995 | James Harpur | "The Frame of Furnace Light" |
| 1996 | Ruth Padel | "Icicles Round a Tree in Dumfriesshire" |
| 1997 | Neil Rollinson | "Constellations" |
| 1998 | Caroline Carver | "horse underwater" |
| 1999 | Simon Rae | "Believed" |
| 2000 | Ian Duhig | "The Lammas Hireling" |
| 2001 | Beatrice Garland | "undressing" |
| 2002 | Julia Copus | "Breaking the Rule" |
| 2003 | Colette Bryce | "The Full Indian Rope Trick" |
| 2004 | Jon Sait | "Homeland" |
| 2005 | Melanie Drane | "The Year the Rice-Crop Failed" |
| 2006 | Mike Barlow | "The Third Wife" |
| 2007 | Sinéad Morrissey | "Through the Square Window" |
| 2008 | Christopher James | "Farewell to the Earth" |
| 2009 | Helen Dunmore | "The Malarkey" |
| 2010 | Paul Adrian | "Robin in Flight" |
| 2011 | Allison McVety | "To the Lighthouse" |
| 2012 | Patricia McCarthy | "Clothes That Escaped the Great War" |
| 2013 | Linda France | "Bernard and Cerinthe" |
| 2014 | Roger Philip Dennis | "Corkscrew Hill Photo" |
| 2015 | Eric Berlin | "Night Errand" |
| 2016 | Stephen Sexton | "The Curfew" |
| 2017 | Dom Bury | "The Opened Field" |
| 2018 | Wayne Holloway-Smith | "The posh mums are boxing in the square" |
| 2019 | Susannah Hart | "Reading the Safeguarding and Child Protection Policy" |
| 2020 | Marvin Thompson | "The Fruit of the Spirit Is Love (Galatians 5:22)" |
| 2021 | Eric Yip | "Fricatives" |
| 2022 | Lee Stockdale | "My Dead Father's General Store in the Middle of a Desert" |
| 2023 | Imogen Wade | "The Time I Was Mugged in New York City" |