Posted on by mark

Cult Challenge: November 2023: “A Little Black Book of Short Poems”

I’m pleased to say that the submissions were phenomenal for this wee book, but in the end I had to make a choice and, err, chose 22 out of the 20 I was aiming for.

So the poets to have work included in the anthology are:

      1. Iris Anne Lewis
      2. Greta Ross
      3. Ceinwen E Cariad Haydon
      4. Carol Lee Saffioti-Hughes
      5. Lisa Lopresti
      6. Suzanne Davies
      7. Liz Kendall
      8. Patricia M Osborne
      9. Kerry Darbishire
      10. Simon Tindale
      11. Stephen Bone
      12. Helen Openshaw
      13. Jackie Truman
      14. Dawn Gorman
      15. Kate Young
      16. Nigel Kent
      17. David Punter
      18. Karen Francis
      19. Brian McManus
      20. Catherine Heighway
      21. Rhiannon Lewis
      22. Katrina Moinet

Again, thanks to everybody who made my life difficult.

This month’s Challenge is  the first time that we will be using our sparkly new Little Black Book format for an anthology, and it seemed perfect for the purposes of this Challenge.

February will see the publication of our third Little Black Book and it would be great to include poems from Cult Members.

So if you are up for the challenge, what I would like for you to do is write a poem that talks about Nature in some sense, using one of the existing Shorter Forms, or even in a form of your own devising.

The way that you put the poem together is entirely up to you – I won’t be counting syllables, so be free to innovate as  much as you like on that front.

To be clear:

  1. Write a Poem that focusses upon Nature
  2. The poem should be based upon an existing Shorter Form or one of your own devising
  3. If you are creating your own form, please feel free to include short notes explaining it, to be printed along with the poem

Rules:

  1. There are no length constraints
  2. You must be a Cult Member to submit your poem – sending it to competition@hedgehogpress.co.uk
  3. Send the poem by 11.59pm on the 30th of November 2023

The best poems/responses will be included in a Little Black Book to be published in February 2024