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!
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.
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
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.
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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