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Chancellor’s Poetry Prize

Chancellor’s Poetry Prize 2025: Making it New

The Chancellor’s Poetry Prize returns this year. Newcastle University students are invited to submit poems that explore the theme making it new, exploring the idea of innovation and originality.

The competition is open to current students from all disciplines.

Entries will be judged by the Chancellor and Neil Astley, Editor and Managing Director of Bloodaxe Books Ltd.

The winner will receive a prize of £250 and will be notified in May.

Deadline: 10.00pm, Friday 4 April 2025

Our Chancellor: Imtiaz Dharker OBE

Imtiaz is a poet, artist and video filmmaker. She was awarded the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry in 2014 and became Chancellor of Newcastle University in 2020.

A Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, she has been Poet in Residence at Cambridge University Library and has worked on several projects across art forms in Leeds, Newcastle and Hull, as well as the Archives of St Paul’s Cathedral. Her six collections include Over the Moon and the latest, Shadow Reader (2024), all published by Bloodaxe Books UK, and her poems have been broadcast widely on BBC Radio 3 and 4 as well as the BBC World Service. She has had a dozen solo exhibitions of drawings around the world, and scripts and directs video films, many of them for non-government organisations working in the areas of shelter, education and health for women and children in India.  

Imtiaz Dharker has been recognised in the 2025 New Year's Honours List with an OBE for services to the Arts.

Chancellor’s Poetry Prize Competition 2025 terms and conditions
General

  1. The Chancellor’s Poetry Prize: Place is open to any current undergraduate or postgraduate student at Newcastle University.
  2. The closing date of the competition is 4 April 2025. All entries must be received by submission to https://forms.office.com/e/8F6SD6MqvC by no later than 10.00pm (UK time) on this date; entries will receive a receipt at the time of submission.
  3. Any entries arriving after this time will not be considered. 
  4. Entrants may only enter one poem.
  5. Entries will not be returned, so please keep a copy. 
  6. Under no circumstances can alterations be made to poems once entered. 
  7. Entrants may withdraw entries from the competition.
  8. Newcastle University will not accept responsibility for competition entries that are lost, mislaid, damaged or delayed in transit, regardless of cause, including (for example) technical malfunction, or systems, network, server or computer hardware or software failure of any kind.
  9. Proof of transmission will not be accepted as proof of receipt of entry to the competition.
  10. Telephone or email confirmation of receipt is not available. Newcastle University is not able to confirm the content of documents submitted, so please ensure you submit the correct version.
  11. The competition organisers reserve the right to change the judging panel without notice and not to award prizes if, in the judges’ opinion, such an action is justified.
  12. Due to the number of entrants, we are unable to respond individually to submissions. 
  13. The judge’s decision is final, and no correspondence will be entered into concerning this decision.

 

Poems

  1. All entries are judged anonymously, and the poet’s name must not appear on the poem itself – please include only your student number in the top right-hand corner.
  2. All poems must have a title and must be between 10 and 30 lines in length. The title is not included in the line count, nor are any blank spaces to indicate stanza or section breaks. Entries should be on the theme of ‘making it new’ and can be written in any style or form.
  3. Poems must be the entrant’s original work. Entries submitted posthumously or on behalf of another person will not be eligible.
  4. Entries must not have been published, self-published, published on a website, blog, online forum, nor on social media such as X, Facebook or Instagram, nor broadcast, nor have won or been placed (as in 2nd, 3rd, runner-up, etc.) in any other competition before the deadline.
  5. Handwritten and postal entries cannot be accepted.
  6. The file type of online entries must be .pdf.
  7. Entries must be written in English as the primary language. 

 

Winners

  1. The winner of the 2025 Chancellor's Poetry Prize will receive £250, paid via bank transfer.
  2. Prize-winners will be notified by email in May 2025. Only successful entrants will be notified.
  3. The winner will be expected to provide a short biography and hi-res photograph. 
  4. The copyright of each poem remains with the author. However, authors of the winning poem, by entering the competition, grant University, the right in perpetuity to publish and/or broadcast their poem.

 

Publicity and Personal Information

  1. Personal information (including any photographs) supplied by entrants when entering or winning this competition will only be used by the University for marketing and promotional activities.