National Poetry Competition

The Diann Blakely National Poetry Competition runs every year in the fall. The competition is judged by that year's Diann Blakely Visiting Poet and announced during their visit to Athens.

The winner of the contest will receive $500 and 25 broadsides of their poem, which will also be archived on this website.

Competition Rules:

Poem submissions must be written in English.
No simultaneously submitted work.
An entry is one poem, 50 lines or fewer, and each author may only submit once in a given year.
Do not submit work previously published in any form, it will not be considered.
Entries will be read blind. There should no identifying information in the poem or in the file name.

Please note that students, faculty, staff, and administrators currently affiliated with the University of Georgia are ineligible for the Diann Blakely National Poetry Competition. Intimate friends, relatives, colleagues, and former or current students of a judge are also ineligible to enter. Previous winners of our contest should wait three years before entering again.

Any entry that does not follow these directions will be disqualified.

The 2024-2025 National Poetry Competition will be judged by visiting poet and translator Vivek Narayanan who is joining us for The Poet Translator, a UGA Spotlight on the Arts Event.

In exchange for the opportunity to submit a poem for consideration in the Diann Blakely National Poetry Competition, the author (“Entrant”) hereby grants the Board of Regents of the University System of Georgia, by and on behalf of the University of Georgia (“University”) a non-exclusive right and license to use the poem submitted (the “Submission”), for judging and for permanent storage with the University of Georgia English Department (collectively, the “Permitted Uses”), in all platforms and in all media now known or hereafter devised. Permitted Uses shall also include the right to present the Submission on the English Department’s website, and in the advertising and promotion of the Diann Blakely National Poetry Competition. The University is under no obligation to use the Submission for any of the Permitted Uses. Nothing herein shall limit the University’s rights to use the poem as a member of the general public.

Submissions will open on November 1, 2024