1st prize: £1000. 2nd prize: £300. 3rd prize: £100
60 lines max.
Poems up to 60 lines. That’s what we’re looking for. On whatever subject fascinates you. You can write less if you want to, but you have 60 lines to express yourself fully.
In our inaugural year, The Plaza Prizes discovered some fantastic new talents. We want to find many more. So try your hand, write a poem this week. Edit it. Let it rest. Return to give it shape over time. And then, send it to us.
Our judge, Tim Liardet, has produced 11 collections to date, with a twelfth having received an Authors’ Foundation work-in-progress award from the Society of Authors. The World Before Snow (Carcanet) and The Blood Choir (Seren) were shortlisted for the T.S Eliot Prize. He has also been long-listed for the Whitbread Poetry Prize, received several Poetry Book Society Recommendations, a Poetry Book Society Pamphlet Choice, an Arts Council England Writer’s Award, several Society of Authors Awards, a Hawthornden Fellowship, four Pushcart nominations, and various other awards.
Tim’s poems have appeared or are due to appear in The Kenyon Review, The New Republic, Slate Magazine, North American Review, London Review of Books, The Times Literary Supplement, Granta, The Poetry Review, Poetry London, New Statesman, The Spectator, The Guardian, The Sunday Times, The Independent, The Independent on Sunday, and many other journals.
Tim is also Professor of Poetry at Bath Spa University, and co-Chair of the Centre for Contemporary Writing, where he teaches poetry at all levels. We think that makes him the perfect judge for this prize.
So, send us, and Tim, your poems. To be long-listed (final 20) will be a peacock feather in your cap. To be shortlisted in the Top 10, or place second or third, or win will be a validation of your skills and get you published in our second anthology in 2024.
