National opportunities


John Betjeman Young People’s Poetry Competition 2010
This competition for young writers aged 11-14 years carries a prize of £1,000 (£500 to the winner and £500 to the English department of their school) which is donated by John Murray Publishers. Young people wishing to enter the competition can download the entry form at http://johnbetjeman.com/comp.html. The deadline for entries is 31 July.

Wigtown Poetry Competition open for submissions
The Wigtown Poetry Competition is now open for entries. The competition is the largest in Scotland, with a first prize of £2,500, runner up prize of £750, eight additional prizes of £50 each and a Gaelic prize of £500. The winning poem and runner-up will also be published in The Scotsman, or its sister paper Scotland on Sunday , and the winner invited to appear at the Wigtown Book Festival 2010. Full details of the competition, along with the application form, can be found at www.wigtownbookfestival.com/poetrycomp.

Prole Books are still open to further submissions of all forms of poetry and prose but would particularly like to see examples of: nonfiction - biographical, autobiographical, historical, travel. They would also like to see more humour. A combination of the two would get them really excited. As ever: visit http://www.prolebooks.co.uk for full information.