June 18--London
American poet Maggie Smith, author of the poem 'Good Bones', which The Guardian, Slate, and others declared a viral success earlier this summer, will guest-judge Eyewear Publishing's Best New British and Irish Poets competition in 2018.
Poets resident in the U.K. or Ireland, regardless of nationality, as well as passport holders from the U.K. or Ireland who live abroad, will be eligible to submit work for consideration if they have not yet published (and are not under contract to publish) a full-length collection of poetry. Poets who have published pamphlets will be eligible to compete.
Smith is the author of Weep Up (Tupelo Press, forthcoming 2018); The Well Speaks of Its Own Poison (Tupelo Press 2015), winner of the Dorset Prize and the 2016 Independent Publisher Book Awards Gold Medal in Poetry; Lamp of the Body (Red Hen Press 2005), winner of the Benjamin Saltman Award; and three prize-winning pamphlets. Her poems have appeared in The Paris Review, The Southern Review, Magma, Waxwing, Virginia Quarterly Review, Guernica, and many other journals. The recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Ohio Arts Council, and the Sustainable Arts Foundation, Smith is a freelance writer and editor, and she serves as a consulting editor to the Kenyon Review.
The 2017 Best New Poets competition, judged by Luke Kennard, is currently open to submissions. The 2016 volume is available from Eyewear Publishing.