This is the 8th poetry competition run by Poets & Players, one of Manchester’s leading organisers of poetry and music events.

The judge for 2020 is Sinéad Morrissey who will read all the anonymous entries. Sinéad Morrissey has published six collections of poetry: There Was Fire in Vancouver (1996); Between Here and There (2002); The State of the Prisons (2005); Through the Square Window (2009); Parallax (2013) and On Balance (2017). Her awards include the Irish Times Poetry Now Award (2009, 2013) and the T S Eliot Prize (2013). In 2016 she received the E M Forster Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. On Balance was awarded the Forward Prize in 2017. She has served as Belfast Poet Laureate (2013-2014) and is currently Director of the Newcastle Centre for the Literary Arts at Newcastle University.

PRIZES

• 1st Prize: £600
• 2nd Prize: £200
• 3rd Prize: £100