Free global poetry competition is launched

The team behind the successful Global Short Story Competition has launched its first free global poetry competition - with the winner to be chosen by internationally-respected poet Bob Beagrie, pic left.

It is the latest in a series of free competitions which run at the team’s free social networking site http://www.globalwriters.net/
The competition, launched on January 7, 2011, carries a £100 first prize and will run for three months (closing on April 7, 2011). There is no theme but a word limit of 250 words per poem. There is no limit on the number of poems submitted per writer.

To enter, writers have to join http://www.globalwriters.net/ then cut and paste their poem into the ‘add a comment’ section to be found in the Group set up on the left hand side of the home page specifically for the competition.

Author John Dean, one of the people behind the team’s competitions, said: “In the three years we have been running competitions, we have concentrated on prose, either short stories or flash fiction, so we thought it was high time that we ran a poetry competition. We know that a lot of the writers entering our competitions also write poetry but we are pretty sure that this competition will attract a new group of writers as well.”

Born and bred in Middlesbrough, North East England, competition judge Bob Beagrie is a poet, community playwright and a Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at Teesside University. Along with Andy Willoughby, he runs Ek Zuban Literature Development and The Electric Kool-Aid Cabaret of the Spoken word.
His publications include: Gothic Horror (Mudfog 1996), Masque: The Art of the Vampyre (Mudfog 2000), Huginn & Munnin (Biscuit 2002), Endeavour: Newfound Notes (Biscuit 2004), The Isle of St Hild (Hartlepool Borough Council 2004), Perkele (Ek Zuban 2006) and Yoik (Cinnamon 2008), The Seer Sung Husband, (Smokestack Books 2010).

His forthcoming collection, Glass Characters, is due to be published by Red Squirrel Press in 2011. His poems have also appeared in many magazines and anthologies. He was shortlisted for the Forward Poetry Prize 2009 and has performed his work across the UK and Europe, often collaborating with musicians, actors, film makers and visual artists. Some samples of his performance work can be viewed on Youtube.

* Both the monthly Global Short Story Competition and the free competitions on http://www.globalwriters.net/ are all run by Certys Ltd, a company based in Darlington in the North East of England. The paid-for monthly Global Short Story Competition, which has already topped £5,000 in prize money awarded, can be found at http://www.globalshortstories.net/