Less than two weeks to go - Closing date: 16 June 2014

MSLEXIA 2014 WOMEN'S PAMPHLET COMPETITION

This competition is for short collections of 20-24 pages of 18-20 poems. To enter, you need to be a women poet who does not have full-length collection published.

1st prize: Publication by Seren Books in 2015

Plus £250, 25 complimentary copies of the pamphlet and a 10 per cent royalty on sales. One or more poems from the pamphlet will be published in Mslexia magazine.
Judge: Amy Wack, poetry editor at Seren Books

Florida-born Amy Wack has been Poetry Editor at Seren since 1992. Amy is a poet herself, and her bincluding the title Women's Works.
Closing date: 16 June 2014

Please make sure you have read the rules before submitting your entry

Enter the competiton



If you're nearly there, but need some inspiration for the final few poems, we've listed 30 writing exercises to help you along.

Please note: The pamphlet competition is separate from the single poem competition. You can submit entries to both competitions, but they must be submitted separately. Success in one competition will not affect your chance of success in the other competition.

If you would like to receive reminders about next year's competition, click here sign up to the Mslexia Updates mailing list.
READ THE 2013 WINNING PAMPHLET

Drake's tone is beautifully sensitive to to the rythms of language: knows when to pull back, when to unfurl startling imagery - Amy Wack

Read what Cath Drake has to say about winning the 2013 competition, and a poem from her winning collection. Her pamphlet, Sleeping with Rivers, will be available in March, published by Seren Books.

Click here »
NEW! POETRY WORKSHOPS

Struggling with putting your collection together? Finding it hard to step back and look at your poems from a new angle? Clare Pollard, poet and tutor, guides you through some practical, fun poetry games to play to help you get a new perspective on how to assemble your poems into a short collection.
Workshop 1: The Idiolect Game
Workshop 2: Snap or Happy Families
Workshop 3: The Word Association Game
JUDGE: AMY WACK

'I am something of a maximalist in that I like to see poems that are packed with life and colour. I like poems that 'tell a story'. I like to be surprised.'

Amy Wack was born in Florida, USA, raised in California, attended San Diego State University, BA English, and Columbia University in New York for an MFA in Creative Writing. She has lived in Wales since 1988, and has been working for Seren since 1990, starting as Admin Assistant on Poetry Wales magazine. Since the early 90s she's been Seren's Poetry Editor and has edited a number of anthologies including Oxygen (with Grahame Davies, 2000) andWomen's Work: Modern Women Poets Writing in English (with Eva Salzman, 2008).

SEREN BOOKS

Seren celebrated 30 years as an independent publisher in 2011. Its poetry list is a range of the classic and contemporary and titles are regularly shortlisted for the TS Eliot, Costa and Forward Prizes. Poets include the prize winning Hilary Menos and Carrie Etter, Pascale Petit, Anne Marie-Fyfe and Carol Rumens, and range from 'senior' poets such as Ruth Bidgood to young and/or debut poets like Nerys Williams, Judy Brown (both Forward shortlisted in 2011), Ellie Evans and Carolyn Jess-Cooke. Seren also publishes the winning pamphlet of the annual Poetry Wales/Purple Moose Competition, and is an enthusiastic supporter of the pamphlet as a way of bringing new poets and discrete groups of poems to a wider audience.

Visit the Seren Books website