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.

OUR LONG LIST OF THE POETS 'HIGHLY COMMENDED' IS NOW PRINTED BELOW! SCROLL DOWN TO SEE IF

YOUR NAME IS THERE.

WE HAVE SELECTED A WINNER, A RUNNER-UP

AND FOUR FEATURED POETS.

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 TWELVE 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 erbacce-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.

HOW WE SELECT: 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 of the poets listed below is highly-commended.

The final result of the selection panel's deliberations

are as follows:

Winner of the 2025 erbacce-prize for poetry is:

Shoba Narayan from Bangalore, India

Shoba will receive a contract with erbacce-press and publication of a perfect-bound collection of her poetry

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

A runner-up has also been selected:

Imogen McHugh from Norwich England

Imogen will also receive a contract with erbacce-press and publication of a perfect-bound collection of her poetry.

For both 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 have also been selected, each will be interviewed and have their poetry extensively

represented in a future erbacce-journal, they are, in alphabetical order, as follows:

Craig Coyle from Wishaw, Scotland. 

Martha Landman from Glandore, Southern Australia.

Mark Murphy from Huddersfield, England.

Smitha Sehgal from Uttar Pradesh, India. 

Lower down on this page we publish the full list of those deemed to be 'HIGHLY COMMENDED'

From the works of these poets we will select poems for inclusion in our perfect bound, 96pp bi-annual erbacce-journals 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.

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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 over 12,000 valid submissions, this year, of which, (judging by name only), about 44% were female submissions to 56% male. (...but note, gender is estimated by names only; we get very few submissions from Mister, Missus or even Ms...)
2. The largest number of submissions this year came from the UK, BUT we had submissions from almost every single country in the world as is reflected in our long-lists below.
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; RTF, 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 2026... 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...