Welcome to the Poetry Book Awards website.
We are 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. We are proud to be a Welsh-based international award open to all indie poets globally.
The 2025 Awards
Congratulations to our shortlisted winners!
To see the list – click here.
Our overall winners will be announced on 1st October 2025, so call back then.
Previous Winners
To see all our past winners – click here.
Background
Even though more and more people enjoy and participate in creative writing, it is becoming increasingly difficult to become traditionally published, especially in poetry. 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 charge an entry fee for each entry.
More
After twenty 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 are therefore a truly international competition, accessible to all (through the English language).
Find out more – FAQs.
To keep up to date, subscribe to our newsletter – click here.
The 2026 Awards
Next year, winners will get the following prize money:
1st Prize – £500
2nd Prize – £250
3rd Prize – £100
In 2026, we are also going to award a single prize to the best children’s poetry book submitted to the contest. More details to follow…
Winners also get:
- Great Amazon & Goodreads reviews
- Earn recognition by 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/local bookshop/free bookshop 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 proudly announce that they are award-winning Poetry Book Awards authors and are confident that the title is respected.
Next year’s competition opens 1st January 2026.
Funding
We should remind you that the awards are funded purely by the organisers & entrants and we receive no grants, bursaries or funding from the Arts Council of Wales, Literature Wales, the Welsh Books Council or any other external agencies whatsoever, even though they get millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money each year to promote literature in Wales.
However, we must say a big thank you to Michael Schmidt OBE, FRSL, founder of Carcanet Press and editor of PN Review, who was both kind and generous when we first set up this competition.
If any libraries, writing groups, small presses, Facebook groups, indie authors, Twitter followers, schools, universities, self-published poets, arts organisations, independent publishers, poetry workshops, bookshops, art galleries, councils, etc. would like more information, please let us know. You can email us or write to us at the usual address.
Thank you
Dave Lewis
All images copyright © Dave Lewis apart from: