Young Scottish poets urged to enter exciting new competition

The Edwin Morgan Poetry Award was established to fulfil the wishes of the late Edwin Morgan, a former Poet Laureate of Scotland and one of the nation’s best loved poets. Morgan spent his life supporting young people and their writing and he fully appreciated the difficulties poets face in getting their first collections published.

The prize of £20,000 will be awarded biennially for the best collection of poems in English, Scots or Gaelic, published or unpublished, by a young Scottish poet under the age of thirty. Full details of the eligibility criteria can be found on the award website.

The award replaces the Edwin Morgan International Poetry Competition which ran from 2008 to 2012 and was one of the biggest poetry prizes in the UK. Details of the new award were first revealed at the Edinburgh International Book Festival.

Judging the 2014 award will be Jen Hadfield, winner of the 2012 Edwin Morgan International Poetry Competition, and Stewart Conn, an award-winning poet and writer who was Edinburgh’s inaugural Makar. The closing date for entries is Monday 3 March.

The award is administered by The Edwin Morgan Trust and the Scottish Poetry Library and the 2014 winner will be announced at a special event during the Edinburgh International Book Festival in August.