Poetry Prize Founded by Ted Hughes Open for Entries

The Arvon Poetry Prize, established thirty years ago by poet and husband of Sylvia Plath Ted Hughes, is now accepting entries. Until August 16, poets from around the world are invited to submit poems (with a seven-pound fee per piece) for the seventy-five-hundred-pound prize (a little less than twelve hundred dollars) sponsored by the British writing organization the Arvon Foundation.

Second- and third-place prizes of twenty-five hundred pounds and one thousand pounds, respectively, will also be given. Winners will be individually notified by October 1, and an announcement will be made in London on November 4.

The judges will be U.K. poet laureate Carol Ann Duffy, who last year launched the Ted Hughes Award for New Work in Poetry won by Alice Oswald; Elaine Feinstein, poet, translator, and Hughes biographer whose first collection, The Circle (Faber Finds, 1970), was a semifinalist for the Lost Man Booker Prize; and Sudeep Sen, whose most recent collection is Letters of Glass (Wings Press, 2010).

For a list of previous winners (including former U.K. poet laureate Andrew Motion) and complete guidelines are available on the Arvon Foundation Web site.

In the video below, judge Duffy's poem "Mrs. Midas" is adapted in animation. The text of the poem is also available on the Web.