[insert photographer here]
Posted by Mick North in Opportunities, Submissions on May 2, 2013
The guerilla poetry collective [insert text here] is looking for a young Cumbrian photographer (aged 16 to 25) to snoop and snap around Lowther Castle and Gardens, producing glorious images for the Beneath the Boughs exhibition project.
The closing date for applications is 31 May. Find out more >>
Hunter Davies Bursaries
Posted by Mick North in Competitions, Opportunities on April 23, 2013
Have you got a book in you? So long as it’s not a novel, Cumbria Community Foundation would love to hear from you. They’re looking for applications for this year’s Hunter Davies Bursaries – three awards of £1,000 each to any aspiring writer working on a Cumbrian non-fiction project, or even just mulling one over. Writers don’t have to be living in the county, but the book must have a Cumbrian connection. The closing date for submissions is 10 May.
The Melita Hume Poetry Prize
Posted by Mick North in Competitions, Opportunities on April 17, 2013
The Melita Hume Poetry Prize is an award of £1,000 plus a publishing deal with Eyewear Publishing, for the best first full-length collection by a young poet (35 years of age or under) writing in the English language. It’s free to enter, and the closing date is 13 May.
Poetry competitions round up
Posted by Mick North in Competitions, Opportunities on March 29, 2013
Here’s a digest of poetry competitions with submission deadlines coming up in the next few weeks, courtesy of the Saison Poetry Library on the South Bank. Picks of the bunch: the SCJ Poetry Award, Poetry London, and Poetic Republic competitions (£1,000 each), the Ware and Vers competitions (each offering £600), and the Manchester-based Poets and Players Prize (£400), which this year is being judged by Cumbrian poet Jacob Polley.
The Poetry School Online
Posted by Mick North in Courses, Opportunities on March 27, 2013

Getting to tutored poetry workshops led by published practitioners in Cumbria can be tricky – lack of opportunity, distance, mountains, snow, floods, apathy, hangovers etc. But there’s no excuse, bar poverty, for not attending an online course, and The Poetry School has nine new ones starting up in May. Places fill up very quickly, so book now to ensure yours. Read more >>
A hedge school for fiction
Posted by Mick North in Courses, News, Opportunities on March 27, 2013

If you know anyone who studies the art of short fiction more assiduously than Brindley Hallam Dennis, let us know. Can’t think of anyone? Thought not. So who better, then, to take instruction from in the business of short story writing, out there in bucolic Curthwaite, in yer man’s actual front room? Nobody better, is who.
BHD’s lined up a fresh Facets of Fiction course – starting 11 April – and a series of special writing days in the distant summer. Wannabe fictionistas should definitely read more >>
Mslexia poetry competitions
Posted by Mick North in Competitions, Opportunities on March 23, 2013
Barely five minutes since Cumbrian poet Polly Atkin wins the 2012 Mslexia Women’s Pamphlet Competition, and the next one’s being announced, along with the magazine’s bumper Women’s Poetry Competition.
There’s a £2,000 top prize for the latter if judge Kathleen Jamie likes the cut of your jib, and £250 plus publication for pamphleteers.
Wordsworth Trust announces Poetry Mentoring Scheme
Posted by Mick North in News, Opportunities on March 13, 2013
Have you been writing poetry for a while and want to take your writing to the next stage? Need a push to polish up (and off) that vital first pamphlet or full-length collection?
Four Cumbrian poets can look forward to benefiting from the support and professional expertise of Wordsworth Trust Poet-in-Residence Judy Brown, who will act as their mentor for an intense three months this summer.
Want to apply? Then read more >>
Beneath the Boughs
Posted by Mick North in Opportunities, Submissions on March 12, 2013
Guerilla poetry collective [insert text here], the brainchild of young Cumbrian poet Katie Hale, is up to something in the bushes, and so might you be. Beneath The Boughs is an exhibition of new poetry scheduled to run Lowther Castle & Gardens near Penrith from 19 July to 9 September 2013.
As with any exhibition, they need something to exhibit. Katie and co are looking for submissions with a different theme each month. For March it’s ‘remnants’ – you’ll find a photo-prompt on their blog – and they want your poems by 31 March.
Read more and find out how to submit >>
Lakeland Book of the Year Awards open for entries
Posted by Mick North in Competitions, Opportunities on March 7, 2013
Written a book about Cumbrian widgets in the last year? Then get it entered for the prestigious Lakeland Book of the Year Awards, open to any book so long as it’s about or set in Cumbria in some way, shape, or form. If it is about widgets, it’d better be good – past winners include A.W. Wainwright (pictured), Harry Griffin, and Sarah Hall. Melvyn Bragg managed a commendation in 1988 for The Maid of Buttermere, but failed to scoop a prize. Read more >>
Mirehouse Poetry Competition
Posted by Mick North in Competitions, Opportunities on February 1, 2013
Blake Morrison judges the 2013 competition, organised in association with Words by the Water. First prize is £350, and eight commended poets receive a hundred quid’s worth of books. This year is the competition’s 10th anniversary. To celebrate the fact, the theme is taken from this line by latterday Mirehouse fan Alfred, Lord Tennyson: “I am a part of all that I have met.” (That’s Tennyson in the picture, taken soon after his meeting with James Butler Hickok.)
The closing date is 7 February. Click here to read last year’s winners, and here >> for how to enter.
Northern Writers’ Awards 2013
Posted by Mick North in Competitions, News, Opportunities on January 24, 2013
After a gap of over ten years, Cumbrian writers are once again eligible to apply for these prestigious and pretty generous awards, now open to writers from all over the ‘greater’ North rather than just the North East. Awards of up to £5,000 are available to a range of writers, from new and ‘emerging’ to the more experienced, for poetry, fiction and creative non-fiction.
The closing date is 31 January. Read more and apply online >>
Mslexia Women’s Short Story Competition
Posted by Mick North in Competitions, Opportunities on January 18, 2013
The 2013 competition offers a first prize of £2,000 plus, as optional extras, a week’s writing retreat at Chawton House Library and a day with a Virago editor.
Second prize bags £500, third gets £250, and three other finalists win £100 each. All winning stories will be published in issue 58, the Jun/Jul/Aug 2013 edition of Mslexia. The judge is Janice Galloway, and the closing date is 18 March 2013. Read more and enter >>













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