Submissions Rules and Terms and Conditions

Submissions Rules and Terms and Conditions

The Michael Marks Environmental Poet of the Year prize

In submitting a portfolio of poems for consideration for the Michael Marks Environmental Poet of the Year prize, entrants agree to be bound by these Terms and Conditions. Please read them carefully before submitting. It is the responsibility of the poet to read these rules and ensure that submissions are eligible. Ineligible submissions will not be considered and no correspondence will be entered into regarding them.

You may also want to read our Frequently Asked Questions

 

Eligibility: general rules

1. The prize is free to enter.
2. All poems must be entirely the work of the poet.
3. All work submitted must relate to the subject of the environment, and the place of the human within it. This may include the climate crisis directly or indirectly. The connection to the subject must be clear. However, each poet is free to interpret the theme creatively, in whichever manner most resonates for them.
4. The prize is open only to persons living in the UK.
5. The portfolio of poems you submit must not have been published before as a sequence. However, individual poems may have been previously published in magazines, anthologies, newspapers or online, so long as they have not been published in a full collection.
6. Entries must be entirely anonymous. Entrants will input their personal information alongside the title of their portfolio only on the Entry portal. Portfolios must not contain the name of the poet, nor any identifying information, neither in the creative work itself, nor in the file name of the doc/docx). Any entries that do contain this information will be disqualified.
7. The deadline for entries is midnight (UK time) on Friday 1st September 2023. Entries received after this deadline will not be considered. The online entry system via our website may become busy as the deadline nears, so entrants are advised not to leave submissions until the last day.
8. Entrants may submit as many portfolios as they wish, providing that each meets the eligibility criteria
9. Posthumous entries cannot be accepted.
10. Poems must be written in English.
11. Translations are not eligible.
12. Amendments to portfolios cannot be made after they have been submitted.
13. Simultaneous submissions of complete portfolios cannot be accepted, although individual poems may be under consideration elsewhere.
14. The series of poems as presented, and the majority of lines of poetry within it, must not be part of a collection that is scheduled for publication before December 2024
15. All work must be submitted via the Michael Marks Awards website entry portal. Entries by other means, such as email or by post, will not be accepted.
16. The Michael Marks Awards reserves the right to disqualify any entry if it has reasonable grounds to believe that the entrant has breached these rules.
17. The Michael Marks Awards cannot accept any responsibility for any damage, loss, injury or disappointment suffered by any entrant entering the competition.
18. The Michael Marks Awards will act in accordance with current UK data protection legislation in relation to your personal data.
19. The Competition and Rules will be governed by English Law. Any dispute will be subject to the sole jurisdiction of the courts of England and Wales.
20. The Michael Marks Awards reserves the right to amend these rules if it is deemed necessary.
21. Submission of an entry will be deemed to imply unqualified acceptance of the Prize’s Rules.
22. If selected as the winner, entrants grant the organisers of the Michael Marks Awards permission to use poems from the submitted portfolio both in publication in the Michael Marks Environmental Poet of the Year pamphlet, and for publicity purposes, of the pamphlet and for the Michael Marks Awards, in printed, electronic and audio form. Material for this will be decided by the Michael Marks Awards and may include, but is not limited to, content for a printed programme and to be shown at any physical or online celebration event. Copyright remains with the authors.
23. The pamphlets will be available for distribution in print, and may at a future date be available in digital format.
24. The winning poet grants the Michael Marks Awards a 5 year, global, English language, non-exclusive license to reproduce their submitted poetry portfolio in the Michael Marks Environmental Poet of the Year Prize pamphlet inclusive of use in digital and print publicity of the pamphlet and the Michael Marks Awards. The poet grants the Michael Marks Awards the right to reproduce on the Michael Marks Awards’ website a selection of the poems for their archive in perpetuity.
25. The winning poet understands that it is a condition of entry, and of receipt of the prizes awarded, that their work shall be used in line with these terms with no further financial remuneration other than the prize money. The winners’ sole award for the Prize is publication in the pamphlet, the one-off prize money and a place on a winners’ residential trip to Greece in association with the Harvard Center for Hellenic Studies. It may be that writers are able to collect royalty payments through relevant collecting societies.
26. The Michael Marks Awards reserves the right to change any or part of the prizes awarded if necessary without prior notice.
27. The organisers reserve the right to showcase a selection of entries (not just the winning entrant) on the Michael Marks Awards website or on the websites of the Awards’ partners. These would be presented within the context of the Environmental Poet of the Year prize.
28. The winning entrants will receive 30 complimentary copies of the pamphlet.
29. This is a non-profit venture and it is therefore a condition of entry, and of receipt of the prizes awarded, that the winning poet permit that poems be published, whether as digital publication or in hardcopy, without payment of a fee, but with appropriate acknowledgements, for distribution as selected by the Michael Marks Awards.
30. The winning poet should be willing to participate in basic publicity of the prizes for the Michael Marks Awards.
31. The winning poet will be expected to attend the launch of their pamphlet, which will be part of the Michael Marks Awards for Poetry Pamphlets Event at the British Library in London in early-mid December (or at an equivalent virtual event). We will update this page with a date when this has been finalised. You will be expected to be available, should you win.
32. The winning poet will be expected to read at a special ‘Environmental Poet of the Year’ event at Wordsworth Grasmere to celebrate the publication of their pamphlet. Arrangements for this event will be made between the winning poet, the Administrator of the Michael Marks Awards, and Wordsworth Grasmere, after they have been told that they have won. There may be the possibility of a virtual event.
33. The Environmental Poet of the Year may have the opportunity to participate in further events with Wordsworth Grasmere while they hold the title ‘Environmental Poet of the Year’: between December 2023 and December 2024.
34. Entrants give permission for the use on the Michael Marks Awards website and partner websites of images or video taken during any events such as those described in the above points.
35. The decision of the judges is final. No correspondence will be entered into.
36. The winning poet will be notified by November 30^th 2023. No correspondence will be entered into regarding the status of entries. Please check the Michael Marks Awards website, newsletter and social media for updates about the prize.

 

How to present your portfolio:

Portfolios must comprise no less than 150 and no more than 200 lines of poetry. This may consist of any number of poems but should be sufficient to fill several pages of the pamphlet. Titles, blank lines, contents pages and page numbers are not included in the line count.

Portfolios must be submitted as a single .doc or .docx file (not as PDFs, .odt, .pages or other file types). No other file types will be accepted.

 

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