Drumroll please
Our great pleasure to share the shortlist for the DIRT Plantable Poetry Competition 2026
It is our great pleasure to share the shortlist for the DIRT Plantable Poetry Competition 2026. Drumroll please….
“I was captivated most by voices that revealed themselves without needing to tell me ‘I am’. I remain haunted by these voices long after putting down the pile, and poems that surprised the poet enough to leave me equally bewitched by the poem’s diversions.”
Alice Willitts, judge and DIRT editor
“We encountered such a rich smorgasbord of places, sounds, textures, characters. There were school plays and hedgerow jinxes, lichens and befuddled celebrities. Wherever they took us, the strongest poems lived by Denise Riley’s line: ‘I work to earth my heart.’”
Joe Wright, guest judge
Congratulations to our shortlisted poets – your poetry has lifted and shaken us. Thank you, Helen Bowell, Jessica Mookherjee, Kara Barlow, Karen Downs-Barton, Linda France, Morag Anderson, Nasim Luczaj, Rachel Curzon, Rona Luo, Yvonne Reddick.
DIRT Plantable Poetry is an imprint of Dialect Press.
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