In 2009, the year in which I discovered there were magazines in the UK and Ireland specifically publishing poetry, I also stumbled upon the wide world of UK-based poetry competitions.

I found the website the Poetry Kit   and entered one or two. I had beginners luck that year, having a poem come third in the Ledbury poetry competition, as well as poems placed in a couple of smaller comps. I was simultaneously making my first exciting forays into submitting to poetry magazines. I’ve always done both- that is submitted to a few competitions and quite a few magazines.

I didn’t (and still don’t) have any strategy for which poems I send where. People talk about the ‘competition poem’ but I’m still not sure what this is, and though I will sometimes read the winners, I don’t study the results to try to assess what type of work is being given prizes…