There is just over a week left for entries in the prestigious 2025 Guernsey International Poetry Competition, which is attracting entries from all over the world.

International poet Imtiaz Dharker is to judge the 2025 competition (Poems on the Move), organised in conjunction with the Guernsey Literary Festival, which runs from 25 April to 4 May.

A British artist and poet based in Helsinki, Finland, scooped the £1000 first prize in the open class of the competition in 2024.

Iona Roisin’s short poem Conch was chosen by judge Paul Muldoon from a record number of more than 3000 entries. The competition truly lived up to its ‘international’ status, attracting entries from 49 countries, including UK, Australia, Bangladesh, Costa Rica, Japan, Nigeria, Taiwan, Aland Islands and UAE.

The annual competition is organised in conjunction with the Guernsey Literary Festival, sponsored by Specsavers and supported by Guernsey Arts.

Iona Roisin, who works across moving image and text, graduated from The Academy of Fine Arts, Helsinki and The Cass School of Art, London Metropolitan University, London. They are a member of the Trans publishing collective Almanac Press and a founder of Trans Library Helsinki.

‘I’d never entered this competition before and have never won a prize for my poetry so I was very surprised and excited – it felt so good to get a ‘yes’! Conch is a poem that came out almost as-is, which is not very common for me. It was drafted during a period of change in my life and then returned to in a later period of change in which I’d been thinking a lot about ageing, gender, love, queerness, home etc,’ says Iona.

One of the most keenly contested classes is for Channel Islands poets, a class won in the past by poets from Jersey, Guernsey and Sark.

The annual competition, which was launched in September, is open to poets worldwide and in the past has attracted more than 2000 poems. The 2025 closing date is 15 January. The competition is this year sponsored by Specsavers and supported by Guernsey Arts.

The competition is divided into three classes, Open (which carries a first prize of £1000), Channel Islands (£250) and Young Poet (£250). Last year’s competition attracted an especially high quality of entries in the Young Poets’ class for under-18s and the organisers hope that this will continue for 2025. There will be prizes for first, second and third in each class and these poems and another 12 will be part of the Poems on the Move display, at Guernsey Airport and other island sites as well as on Guernsey buses.

Entries must be no longer than 14 lines and must fit on a single A4 page.

Full details and entry forms are available on the website https://poemsonthemove.com or on leaflets which can be found at a number of sites in the Channel Islands. Details will also be in the UK magazine Poetry Review and a number of other national and international poetry and literary magazines and websites.