Fact, Fantasy and Poetry

Here are two free poetry competitions which you can enter right now. There's a £100 first prize in our open competition, Fact and Fantasy. You can enter by post or email and make sure you put "Fact and Fantasy" at the top of your entry. Your poem can be on any subject you like but must be no more than 160 words or 20 lines, and you can't use "Fact and Fantasy" as the title. Send your entries now because this competition closes in September and we want to see something from you.

Also, there's a £1000 prize to the winner of our annual Local Poem competition. You must put "Local Poem" at the top of your entry and the theme must be someone or something local. For example, last year's winner was a poem about two cooling towers. The previous year's winner was a poem about a river, and three years ago, the winner was about village life. You could write a poem about a famous person or even a member of your family, living or dead. You could write a poem about your local bus driver or your greengrocer. The same length limitations apply to this competition and we want to see something from you now.

If you have entered this year's National Poetry Anthology, you may hear from us with some good news in the very near future. Judging is currently taking place and we have already selected around 300 regional winners who will all receive a free copy of the book, and they will get to vote for the best poem. The author of that poem will receive £1000. All the regional winners will be contacted within the next few weeks. So if you haven't heard anything yet, keep your fingers crossed.

Our Poets of the Year book will be out in September, at the same time as Poetry By Moonlight. A Guiding Light will be out in November, and Whispers on the Breeze will be out in December. Don't forget that you can still submit a poem for our new CD anthology, Voices in Verse. All you have to do is email or post us a poem and put "Voices in Verse" at the top (but you can't use this as the title) and we will get back to you if we can accept it. So please be sure to include your phone number and address.

Many thanks for all the funny stories we have received for Things Kids Say, the book we are producing in association with Barnardo's, to raise money for this worthy charity. We are also grateful to all the artists who have provided illustrations for the book, which should be out in about three months. We are also pleased to say that it's been a very good year for our other charity projects, and we have now helped to raise over £20,000 for cancer charities this year, making a total of £172,000 in the last six years.

Kind regards,
Peter Quinn
info@unitedpress.co.uk

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