The Poetry Book Awards is an annual, international book award given to the best poetry books produced by indie writers, self-published authors or books published by small, truly independent presses.


Congratulations Lucy Ingrams – winner of the 2024 Poetry Book Awards!

Lucy Ingrams by Shalini Saran
Photo credit: Shalini Saran

Lucy Ingrams has had work published in many magazines and journals, most recently Poetry Ireland Review and Agenda. Signs is Lucy Ingrams’ debut collection and was published by Live Canon in 2023.

Awards for her work include the Manchester Poetry Prize (2015) and the Magma poetry prize (2016) and recent poems have appeared in Poetry Salzburg Review, Tears in the Fence and Under the Radar. She holds an MPhil in creative writing from the University of South Wales and is based in Oxford in the UK.

Our top 3 winning books

Winners:

1st Prize           Signs – Lucy Ingrams, Oxford, England

2nd Prize         the archive is all in present tense – Elizabeth Hoover, Saint Louis, USA

3rd Prize          My Country is the Whole World – Felicia McCarthy, Dublin, Ireland

To see all our winners – click here.


We are proud to be a Welsh-based international award open to all indie authors and self-published poets globally.  Why should you enter the Poetry Book Awards?  In 2025, we shall be offering the following prize money:

1st Prize – £500

2nd Prize – £250

3rd Prize – £100

Poetry Book Awards

Winners also get:

  • Great Amazon & Goodreads reviews
  • Earn recognition from having an award-winning book
  • Certificate, logo to use on books and future work
  • Your book cover & link on our website
  • All books are donated to local libraries/schools after the awards so you get more publicity

Your book will be judged by experienced, published poets and/or respected authors.  We aim to achieve respect and recognition from authors, publishers and publishing organisations for our winning choices.  This will help the winners gain further recognition when they can proudly announce that they are award-winning authors of the Poetry Book Awards and be confident that the title is respected.

The 6th awards will open 1st Januray 2025.


To enter click here.

Poetry Book Awards

Check out all previous winners – click here.


Background

Even though more and more people are enjoying and participating in creative writing it is becoming increasingly difficult to become traditionally published, especially in the poetry world.  Most of the top book prizes and competitions do not allow self-published authors to enter.  If they are allowed then many are extremely expensive leaving truly independent publishers, self-publishers and indie authors struggling to find the recognition they deserve. Instead of asking for huge sums of money from those shortlisted we instead charge an entry fee for each entry.

More

After many years of finding and promoting outstanding poets through the International Welsh Poetry Competition, we now aim to bring further recognition to those writers who have produced a book-length collection of their work and hope to heighten a poet’s profile by offering this new award.

In our first few years, we have already had poets from Australia, Canada, Cyprus, England, France, Germany, Greece, India, Ireland, New Zealand, Mauritius, Netherlands, Portugal, Scotland, South Africa, Spain, Switzerland, UAE, USA & Wales!  The Poetry Book Awards is therefore a truly international competition, accessible to all (through the English language).

Find out more – FAQs.

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Algorithm by Dave Lewis, new poetry collection


All images copyright © Dave Lewis apart from:

Jill Wellington
Min An
Pixabay