The Rialto Nature And Place Poetry Competition 2026

The Rialto Nature And Place Poetry Competition 2026

The RSPB and The Rialto are additionally working with BirdLife International, the Cambridge Conservation Initiative and the University of Leeds Poetry Centre. There’s a fantastic range of prizes on offer and prizewinners will be invited to read their poems at an event withMona Arshi at CCI in summer 2026.

The closing date for entries is midnight on 1st April 2026.

As well as offering poets the chance to win considerable cash prizes and publication of their poems, the competition supports conservation and poetry. We are working in partnership with leading independent UK poetry magazine, The Rialto, as we feel the magazine will be the perfect place to showcase the winning entries.

Prizes

1st PRIZE £1000
2nd PRIZE £500
3rd PRIZE £250

Our judge is celebrated poet, Mona Arshi.

Mona Arshi is a poet, novelist and essayist. Mona trained as a Human rights lawyer. Her debut collection Small Hands won the Forward Prize for best first collection in 2015. Her second collection Dear Big Gods was published in 2019. Her writing has been featured in The Times, The Guardian, Granta, The Yale Review and The Times of India as well as on the London Underground. She was writer in Residence at Cley Marshes, a Norfolk Wildlife Trust Reserve, in Norfolk in 2021. Nature Matters was published by Faber in May 2025. Her third collection Mouth was published by Chatto and Windus in July 2025.

The entry fee is £7 for the first poem and £4 for each subsequent poem.

Full details and the facility to enter online can be found on The Rialto website:

  https://www.therialto.co.uk/pages/nature-poetry-competition/