Please read the following conditions of entry carefully before you send us your poems. Entries that don't comply with them will be disqualified without refund.
- Maximum length, excluding title and any blank lines: Open and Poem for Children categories, up to 40 lines. Short category, up to 10 lines.
- Each entered poem, including its title, should be typed single-spaced in a standard 10 or 12 point font on one side of a single A4 sheet, with a left margin wide enough for ring binding, and should not bear anything to identify the poet. No fancy/coloured/oversized fonts or images please!
- Each postal entry (of one or more poems) should be accompanied by an entry form, downloadable from the bottom of this page. If you are unable to download an entry form, please email us via the 'Contact' page and we will send you one.
- Short poems (up to ten lines) may be entered for any or all categories, on payment of an appropriate entry fee for each. Please provide a separate copy of your poem for each category entered, even if you are entering online.
- Poems must be the original work of the entrant, unpublished, and must not have won a prize in any other competition. No entrant may win more than one prize in each category.
- To qualify for the 'Best Devon Poem' special prize, the poet must be resident in Devon. The poem may be on any subject. Please mark each qualifying poem top left with a 'D'.
- Postal Entry fee: £4.50 per poem, or £16 for four poems. Thereafter, £4.00 per poem. Cheques must be in pounds sterling, drawn on a UK bank and made payable to 'The Plough Arts Centre'.
- Online Entry fee: £4.85 per poem, or £18 for four poems. Thereafter £4.50 per poem. The online entry surcharge helps to defray printing costs, extra administrative time and PayPal charges.
- Tick-box critiques are available at £6 per poem, and full critiques at £30 per poem. Postal entries for critique must be accompanied by an SAE clearly marked 'Critique/s'. Email critiques are not available for postal entries. Please allow up to eight weeks for delivery of your critique/s.
- Please keep a copy of your work, as we cannot return entries. Please check your entry before you send it, since we cannot amend it for you later.
- For a list of winners and listed poems, please subscribe to the free email results service via the form on this websit's home page. Alternatively, send an A4 sized SAE marked 'results' and stamped at Large Letter rate. Results run to around eight duplexed pages, so please don't send a tiny envelope.
- Entries close at midnight (local time) on November 30th 2011. Entries received (in the case of online entries) or posted (in the case of postal entries) after this deadline will be disqualified.
- Prize-winners will be notified by February 1st 2012. The judge's decision is final, and no correspondence will be entered into.
- Copyright remains with the author, but The Plough Arts Centre reserves the right to display winning entries on its website, and to display, broadcast, or use them in promotional literature for a period of twelve months after the competition's close.
