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The Whitmarsh Prize for Young Writers is an annual award, funded by a legacy from the late poet John J. Whitmarsh. What do I win? The prize is an engraved award and a collection of your own poetry to be published in a book to a maximum of 60 pages and to receive ten copies of the book for yourself, family and friends.

How do I win? Simply submit at least three of your poems to the Budding Poet Website during the course of the year and the writer who most impresses the panel and site visitors with their poetry during the year will be awarded the prize. The prize will be judged during June of each year, so make sure you have submitted your poetry by the 31st May if you want to be considered for the prize. The decision of the panel is final. How do I collect my prize? Be sure when you send in your work that we always have a contact email or address for you. You will be contacted if you are the winner and we hold two events each year in October and November, so we will try to find one that is close enough for you to attend to receive your prize. If you are unable to attend the events, we will either bring or post your award to you and then after our November event is over, we will be in touch with you to work on your own collection of poetry. What happens if I don't have enough poetry for my own collection yet? We can easily put off putting your book together until you are ready, or we can share the book collection with the runners up of the competiton, as you wish. We will discuss this with you at the time. What do I do if I don't want to enter the competiton but I want to submit a poem? Simply say on your email or letter that you do not wish to enter for The Whitmarsh Prize. Will you edit my poetry before it is published? Yes, your poetry will be checked for errors and it is extremely rare that we will publish certain offensive words or extremely challenging subjects but again, we will discuss this with you in advance and it's nothing to be worried about as we will accept most works that are well written, well thought out and where the language used is in context for the poem. Have you already decided who has won The Whitmarsh Prize for 2004? Yes, and we are pleased to announce that the winner is Maria Onyango from Salisbury, Wiltshire, UK. More news will be available soon as to where and when we will be presenting her with her prize.