Update on the situation relating to the 2025 erbacce-prize for poetry which opened for submissions on January 1st 2025 and closed April 30th 2025 at midnight.

IF YOU SENT A SUBMISSION BOOKMARK THIS PAGE

OUR LONG LIST WILL BE PRINTED BELOW!

(we work FAST; editing as we go along BUT ALLOW 7-14 DAYS PLEASE)

Every single year since we began organising the erbacce-prize for poetry,

the number of submissions has grown and now we can safely claim to be

THE BIGGEST, MOST PRESTIGIOUS, POETRY COMPETITION IN THE WORLD. 

This year, In 2025, over a four months period, we received more than TEN THOUSAND

admissible/valid submissions from every corner of the globe

(That meant we had over FORTY-FIVE thousand+ pages of poetry to read)

The erbacce-team of volunteers are proud that the erbacce-prize for poetry is now

established, without a shadow of a doubt, as

the premier poetry-prize world-wide

this year we are in fact 21 years old!

IMPORTANT NOTIFICATION; 

As from Autumn 2025 we will no longer send out hard copies of our journal to countries outside of the UK and some parts of the EU. This is due to spiralling postal charges and import duties being imposed by Customs. Instead we shall be sending (free) PDF versions to poets included in each edition.

Every single submission is filtered and then sent to the selection panel who judge every entry BLIND... You can check out the selection-team-members HERE and further down this page you can see the long-list of poets which were judged to be worthy of further consideration for our prestigious prize and many of these will be selected for inclusion in a future erbacce-journal.

The poets. who will shortly be listed in our long-list below,  made the cut from many thousands

of submissions and are thus

among the Crème De La Crème of poets world-wide; each and every one is highly-commended.

The final result of the selection panel's deliberations will appear here in about 14 days time

so book-mark this page:

Winner of the 2025 erbacce-prize for poetry is:

'to-be-announced'

The poet will win; a contract with erbacce-press for publication of a perfect-bound collection of his/her poetry

which will proclaim on the cover 'Winner of the erbacce-prize for poetry 2025'.

A runner-up or runner ups may also be selected and their name/s will appear below:

'to-be-announced'

Any nominated runner-up wins; a contract with erbacce-press for publication of a collection of his/her poetry, we will negotiate with all selected poets with regard to exactly what best suits her formatting

For all poets selected we will pay all costs and registration fees for Nielsen and ISBN etc.

and will supply key-universities with copies  of the books as per legal requirements and

we will also set up a personal page on our site for each poet... we will also pay

author-royalties on sales at 20% and send free copies to them both also.

Four featured poets, who will be interviewed and have their poetry extensively

represented in a journal, will be selected also:

'to be announced'

Lower down on this page we will publish the list of those deemed to be worthy of merit and from the works

of these poets we will select poems for inclusion in our perfect bound, 96pp bi-annual and UK poets

included in these journals will be sent a free copy but please understand that due to soaring

postal charges and customs tariffs imposed by the EU , those overseas, will be sent a PDF version.

******************************************************************************************

Thank you to all who entered; the standard was, as always, very high

and you will soon see from the list of commended poets which will be

published below that they stemmed from all over the globe.

PLEASE NOTE ALSO THAT ALL SELECTIONS ARE MADE 'BLIND'.

THIS IS IMPORTANT; THE SELECTORS WERE NOT SWAYED BY 'BIG NAME' POETS;

THE QUALITY OF THE SUBMISSION IS THE ONLY THING THEY CONSIDERED.

And what that means is that none of the panel could see the names of the poets who submitted a five-page entry: submissions came to a neutral email and there the names and all details were removed from the submission and

an identity number was allocated prior to the submissions before being sent to members of the selection panel. 

You can check if you are included on the long list below where each poet is listed alphabetically by first name. If you name is NOT on the list please do remember that we had record submissions world-wide, the selectors had a difficult time and it could be your submission lost out by one single vote. Overall every Panel-member expressed genuine astonishment at the exceptionally high quality of the submissions; poetry is alive world-wide and this despite phony competitions trying to rip-off poets by asking them to pay to have their poems read or to pay to enter dubious poetry competitions. Ask yourself why it is that these people ask you to pay them to read your poems? It stinks! It treats poets with contempt; it effectively says 'Send us a poem you have spent hours, maybe months, crafting... and if you pay us five-quid we MAY actually read it.' No! No! No! You can NOT disrespect poets like that! Ugh; it infuriates us all here at erbacce-press. We urge genuine poets to

NEVER EVER PAY TO ENTER A POETRY COMPETITION

Also; check the big names who have been selected below and you will see that they are among the finest in the world.

A few facts that might interest you;

1. There were just under 10,000 valid submissions, this year, of which, (judging by name only), about 47% were female submissions to 53% male. (This is the first year we have had more male submissions than female... but remember it is estimated by names only; we get very few submissions from Mister, Missus or even Ms...)
2. Most submissions came from the USA and UK (about equal) BUT we had submissions from almost every single country in the world as is reflected in our long-lists below and we're pleased to see many submissions of high quality from China.
3. Roughly a thousand submissions did not follow submission guidelines and thus were rejected (UNBELIEVABLE isn't it??? Most of these had an email displayed-name that did not match their given-name; i.e. a submission from poet named 'Fred Flintstone' would have a displayed email address of 'Betty Boob')
4. A few gave incomplete snail-mail addresses and these simply can't legally be accepted. We need a FULL and complete snail-mail address... and a word to those from America; this means adding 'USA' to your address as there are actually countries that exist outside of America.
5. Also there were several who sent word docs or PDFs or included frames... we need submissions in Word; Rich Text Format ONLY. No frames.
6. A few stated their given-name as something we queried as with 'Fuzzy-Wuzzy-Gongool' (yes this idiot exists) Be clear; if you are one of the poets selected then you can use ANY PEN-NAME YOU CHOOSE but on your submissions we need your legal given name.

Bookmark this page; maybe start getting together your submissions for 2025... and PLEASE consider purchasing a subscription to the erbacce  poetry journal which we publish bi-annually. We can only offer this FREE TO ENTER prestigious prize annually if we have subscriptions to the journal; we get no money from anywhere else, not from the arts-council or the lottery or anyone, because we want to remain independent and dedicated to poets and poetry. Please support us.

FINALLY; Thank you ALL so much for your submissions, every single one was read and most were enjoyed, we couldn't continue to offer this 100% FREE TO ENTER competition annually if it wasn't for those of you who support our co-operative publishing house by subscribing to the erbacce-journal. (FREE download sample-copy available) If you don't subscribe; please consider doing so. ...we repeat again; if your name is listed below you are a VERY special poet; the world needs poets and poetry, so whatever you do; keep up the good work...