final weeks for 2011 poetry submissions

Our reading period is coming to an end. Deadline for 2011 is December 15th. Materials sent after this date will not be considered until the Young British Poets staff resumes poetry reviews on February 1st, 2012.

Want to submit? Please read our guidelines here.


kevin bacon
Editor, YBP

Slightly Foxed Young Writers’ Competition

If you enjoy writing about the books you love, then this is a great opportunity to get your work noticed. Slightly Foxed, "the real reader's quarterly", is calling all young writers to participate in its Young Writers’ Competition. The magazine covers all genres of fiction and non-fiction, including poetry and short story collections, and the books it features aren’t latest publications or big sellers. "We’re interested in books that have somehow slipped from notice but which have meant something to the people who write about them", they say.
Entries should be submitted in Microsoft Word format to youngwriters@foxedquarterly.com until January 15th, 2012. Read the full competition guidelines here.

First prize: winner receives £ 250 and is granted the publication of the winning article in Slightly Foxed, Summer 2012, plus a one-year subscription, a Slightly Foxed book bag and The Chambers Dictionary, 12th edition

Deadline: January 15th, 2012

nikolai

And I will collect your stories, Papa,
like one of your Byzantine hagiographers
And you’ll sing again with your guitar at the kitchen table.
When it’s late and everyone has had too much cognac,
your hair looking so sorry about time and illness–

In an apartment block, snowfall batters windows
Through a darkened corridor, a cat slinks along a wall
A toddler peels back wallpaper to lick at the plaster, eyes half shut
searching for calcium.

A boy runs into a water logged field, his shoes are inverse boats
And he opens his lungs and screams
screams,
for joy,

for love of open space.


varia karipoff (Melbourne, Australia, 1983)

quitting cheese

My discontentment resides in Nottingham
along with some choice pubs
and a favourite day: The Tap, The Stage,
a trip to the park one afternoon
when everything was fresh; the clouds
shrugged out a little rain, the sun
huffed around them, our eyeballs
beamed, an animated white.

Picnicking was rife: foragers
raided the shrubbery, old relics
handed-out hippy wisdom and we
feasted on each other, spinning
the conversational equivalent
of a Roly-Poly; living ubiquitously,
drinking a lot - I wasn’t, even once,
an arsehole, just overused memory.

When we revisited Nottingham
the gaggle had gone and the winds
came and scraped against our bones;
we are a banquet folding
into a cheese cube too many,
bellyache, that fateful feeling
of having peaked too early.


michael pedersen (Edinburgh, Scotland, 1984)

4 am poem, 2 july 2008

It is Wednesday. The taxi is outside,
Humming like a hairdryer, and you are
Yet to leave for Holland. I can still taste
Last night’s chickpeas and cuttlefish,
The Fume Blanc, the flavour of you.
I have barely aged in two days, despite
The details of my birth certificate,
And as I sleepily ponder the necessity
Of poetic license, how writing poems
Is akin to fibbing to others and particularly yourself,
Just as every musical needs a chorus line,
And in Hollywood there's a girl for every geek,
All the birds in the street suddenly burst into song
As you, going, close one door and open another,
Proving me wrong, once again.


alexander williamson (Sandbach, Cheshire, 1979)

darklight

for S.E.






Waking and rising in the January darklight,
I recall the morning when we didn’t watch the dawn.
That was when I realised it was winter; now we’re past
the solstice and night’s pendulum no longer swings as
far as it did. Soon the both of us will have to grow
accustomed to light pressing on our eyelids, to light
rousing us from dreams. By the time I’ve scrubbed and lathered
the sleep from my skin, the sky’s already indigo.
(When I leave the house the world’s already there, ready
and waiting for me, but the sky is muffled up in
thick grey clouds. I wear a scarf. It’s cold).


anthony adler (St Albans, Hertfordshire, 1990)

francis

Funny that you are an artist because you think like one touch like one as you describe my
Chiaroscuro cheeks in awe of the light the shade around us the sheets swirl unmade a
Van Gogh night sky but we are still to better see the speed the beams bounce it all goes
Back to the body everything is for us to consume we make it that way it is all for eyes ears
Nose mouth hands guts brain heart spirit soars as you caress my contours I sense the
Sculptor in you stroking away at the stone shedding the stubbornness finding human form
Beneath suspended Woodman delicate disgusting transcendental trickery can you feel
Your blood quickening dribbling drying rich russet paint that makes sense of this blank
Canvas the way you arrange and divide my sight my attention with your skill your hands
How have you sown planted nourished these thoughts Pollock surprise heartlight shines
Brighter now I know how you see me a beauty similar to art itself not always attractive but
Always challenging the grotesque is sacred why else decorate churches with gargoyles


emily s. morgan (Cambridge, 1990)