Vital Synz

The Edwin Morgan International
Poetry Competition 2008

The Edwin Morgan International Poetry Competition is held in association with the
Edinburgh International Book Festival.
Thank you to all participants.

The competition is now closed -
(deadline 2nd JUNE 2008 Midnight GMT).

Competition winners will be informed by mid-July; there will be a prize-giving ceremony in August and winning poems will be published on the website shortly thereafter.

1. First Prize: £5000
2. Second Prize: £1000
3. Third Prize: £500
4. Runner-up: two prizes of £50 each

Vital Synz is delighted to be able to host and organise one of Europe's richest poetry prizes. These prizes will be awarded to the poems that most impress this year's judges: Colette Bryce, Donny O'Rourke and Richard Price. (Read the Rules)

The competition is named in honour of Edwin Morgan, Scotland's first national poet: The Scots Makar. Widely recognised as one of the most significant poets of the twentieth century, Morgan's Collected Poems were published by Carcanet in 1990 and his Collected Translations in 1996, also by Carcanet. Since then, however, he has been as prolific as ever, publishing some thirteen books of further poems, translations and plays, most recently Tales from Baron Munchausen (Mariscat Press, 2004) and The Play of Gilgamesh (Carcanet, 2005). Among the many honours and awards Edwin Morgan has received are an OBE in 1982, the Soros Translation Award (1985), The Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry (2000), the Weidenfeld Translation Prize (2001) and the Jackie Forster Memorial Award for Culture (2003). His excellent website may be visited at www.EdwinMorgan.com

Each of our judges is among the country's most distinctive voices in poetry:

Colette Bryce was born in Derry in 1970. In 1995 she won an Eric Gregory award and subsequently published her first collection, The Heel of Bernadette with Picador in 2000. This won the Aldeburgh Poetry Festival Prize for Best First Collection. Her second, The Full Indian Rope Trick was published by Picador in 2004.

Donny O'Rourke was born in Port Glasgow in 1959 and has had overlapping careers as a poet, television producer, broadcaster, journalist, academic and songwriter. He has been the recipient of many awards, fellowships and prizes including, most recently the Hermann Kesten Stipendium and a Major Scottish Arts Council Writers' Bursary. His collections include The Waistband and other poems (Polygon, 1996) and From Poetry's Waiting Room (Spatlese Verlag Nurnberg, 2005).

Richard Price is the author of Lucky Day (Carcanet, 2005) which was shortlisted for the Whitbread Prize and Greenfields (Carcanet, 2007). His collection of short stories, A Boy in Summer, was published by 11:9 in 2002. Head of Modern British Collections at the British Library in London, he has also been an influential editor of many small literary magazines including Gairfish, Southfields, Verse and PS.

Below, you will find competition rules Vital Synz wishes you all good luck!

The Edwin Morgan International
Poetry Competition 2008

Competition Rules

• Closing date and time for receipt of entries:
  2nd JUNE 2008
• Maximum of 60 lines per poem
• The Prize is open to anyone, including non-UK applicants, over 18 years
• Entries must be entirely the work of the entrant and must never have been published, self-published, published on any website or broadcast
• Entries must be in English.
• Entries must be anonymous with no identifying marks other than the title
• Alterations cannot be made to poems once they have been submitted
• Entrants can submit up to 3 (three) poems, provided the appropriate entry fee is included: the entry fee is £5 per poem
• Members of Glasgow Poetry Society CIC can enter the competition for free
• The copyright of each poem remains with the author. The authors of the winning poems must grant the Glasgow Poetry Society the right to use the poems for one year from date of award
• Prizewinners will be notified in writing by mid-July 2008. The list of prizewinners, and winning poems, will be displayed on the website shortly after the prize-giving ceremony, which takes place in August 2008
• No employee, or partners or relatives of employees, of Glasgow Poetry Society CIC may enter the competition
• The judge's decision is final and no correspondence can be entered into
• Competition entries cannot be returned

Entry implies acceptance of all the rules. Failure to comply with the entry requirements will result in disqualification.