The Black Spring Press Group

Any poem, published or unpublished, originally written in English by one author, and first published and/or written between January 1 2010 and December 31, 2025, is eligible for submission. Poets from any country are welcome, but must be aged 18 or over by time of entry.
The top 100 poems (by different poets) will be selected and included in an anthology to be published including a bio page for each poet, and will be sold in the USA, UK, Ireland, Canada and elsewhere where possible.
Each Submission may include up to five poems.
This is not a blind competition, so add bio note and contact details with publishing credits for the poems, please.
Poems can be up to 120 lines long; must be submitted as word or pdf docs; single-spaced, 12-font and Arial or times new roman, preferably, with stanza breaks across multiple pages marked.
Judges will be the editorial team at our publishing imprints and companies.
We are open to all forms, styles, genres, and poetics, from the most traditional to the most experimental, and will seek to adjudicate on the terms on which the texts are offered, except insofar as the poems must be texts (not multimedia or recorded only, but somehow inscribed). We seek to impose no uniform or dominant critical perspective.
In the unlikely eventuality we receive insufficient submissions, we will cancel the competition and return all entries.
No current Eyewear employee, or student or close family member of any of the judges will be eligible.

The Best New British and Irish Poets competition collects poems from the best new poets in the UK and Ireland. It is based on a similar and well-known US prize anthology. Each judge is free to decide what 'best' means for them. The judge's selected poems will be published in The Best New British and Irish Poets anthology in 2026, following the anthologies from 2016 to 2021.

Judges: tba

Eligibility: poets resident in the UK or Ireland, regardless of nationality, as well as passport holders from the UK or Ireland who live abroad, are eligible to submit work for consideration if they have not yet published (and are not under contract to publish at time of entry) a full-length collection of poetry. Poets who have published pamphlets are eligible to compete as are poets included in previous editions of the anthology.  It is now past time in the UK to celebrate and promote the true diversity of British poetry, and as a press we are constantly studying, reading, listening, learning, and discussing, as we aim to always grow, do better, and be the best we could hope to be.

Guidelines: submit original poems in the English language for consideration. Poems may have appeared before in print periodicals, journals, or magazines, and even in online venues. Please include any prior publication information for each submitted poem in your cover letter. Your cover letter should also include a brief biographical note with your contact details. Do not include your name on your poems.

READING FEE: Because we need to pay a judge/editor to read all the submissions, and their time is worth respecting with a small fee, we will be charging 5 pounds per poem submitted. We hope this will not be a barrier to submission. If any one wishes to submit, and cannot afford this small payment, they may contact us at info @ eyewearpublishing.com so we can offer them an alternative option. This small fee is not used to make any profit by our company. The Submittable platform takes a percentage so this leaves us with 3.76 per poem. We note that many presses and poetry contests, including the National Poetry competition charge reasonable entry fees.