MAGMA POETRY COMPETITION 2026/27

Now open for entries in both categories  

The Judge’s Prize – poems of 11 to 50 lines

The Editors’ Prize – poems of up to 10 lines

Deadline 31 January 2027 11:59 pm GMT

This year the Judge’s Prize for poems of 11 to 50 lines will be judged by Fiona Benson, winner of the 2026 Laurel  Prize for her most recent collection Midden Witch. Fiona lives in Devon with her husband and their two daughters. Midden Witch was preceded by the collections Bright Travellers (Seamus Heaney Prize for first collection, Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize), Vertigo & Ghost (Roehampton Poetry Prize and the Forward Prize for Best Collection), and Ephemeron (all collections with Jonathan Cape). She is currently working with Ukrainian poets and poetry and has recently contributed as editor and poetry translator to Artur Dron's We Were Here and Yaryna Chornohuz's Dasein (both with Jantar Press); she is currently working on Fedir Rudyi's debut collection The Position with co-translator Victor Shepelev. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

The Editors’ Prize is judged by a panel of Magma Editors and is for poems of up to 10 lines. The prize money for both competitions is the same, so double your chances and try your luck at both.

First prize for the Judge’s and Editors’ Prize is £1000, second prize £500 and third prize £250. 

The three prize-winning poems from each category will be published in Magma Issue 98 in Summer 2027 and there will also be five special mentions for each of the Judge’s Prize and Editors’ Prize categories.  All winning and commended poems will be published online on the Magma website. Winning and commended poets will be invited to read their poems at a Magma Competition event in Spring 2027.

Last years' winners were published in Magma 95 Architecture Issue which is now sold out, although all winning and commended poems were also published in a free-to-download PDF which is available here.

All entries are judged anonymously so the submitted documents must not contain any names or identifying marks.

The entry fees are £8 for the first poem, £6 for the second and each subsequent poem. Magma magazine subscribers benefit from reduced fees: £4 for the first poem, £3 for the second and each subsequent poem. 

You can subscribe to Magma Poetry from £22.00 here.   

HOW TO ENTER VIA SUBMITTABLE

• You may enter as many poems as you like in each category (The Judge’s Prize for poems of 11 to 50 lines, or The Editors’ Prize for poems of up to 10 lines), but you must submit to each category in separate documents. NB Only written poetry counts as lines. Spaces between lines or stanzas, poem titles, epigraphs or dedications do not count as lines.
• Please upload the poems in one document for each category. Please name the documents Judge’s Prize or Editors’ Prize as applicable and submit all of the poems for that category in the relevant document.   
• NB DO NOT INCLUDE YOUR NAME OR ANY IDENTIFYING MARKS on the submitted documents.    
• Pay for all entries by picking the appropriate payment amount for total poems submitted. Subscriber and non-subscriber entries will be cross-referenced against our subscriber list and incorrectly paid entries may be disqualified. You can subscribe to Magma from £22.00 here but you must do this before you enter. 
• The entry fees are £8 for the first poem, £6 for the second and each subsequent poem. Magma magazine subscribers benefit from reduced fees: £4 for the first poem, £3 for the second and each subsequent poem. 
• The competition closes at 11:59 pm GMT on 31 January 2027. 

GENERAL

• No alterations can be made after receipt, nor fees refunded. 
• All poems must not have been previously published, self-published or accepted for publication in print or online, broadcast, or have won or been placed in another competition at any time.
• The Judge’s and Editors’ decisions are final and no correspondence can be entered into. No entrant may win more than one prize in each section. 
• Should the named judge be unable to proceed, we aim to substitute an alternative judge of equivalent standing as a poet. 
• Prizewinners will be notified individually in April 2027. The results will also be published on the Magma Poetry website after the prize-giving event. 
• Copyright of each entry remains with the author, but Magma Poetry has the right to first publication of the winning poems in print and/or online within six months of the competition deadline. 
• Entry implies acceptance of all the rules. Failure to comply with the rules will result in disqualification. 

Call for Submissions

Magma 98: Doubt

Submissions window open 1st – 31st November 2026

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We are excited to be inviting submissions for issue 98 of Magma: Doubt. 

We want you to explore doubt from a range of different angles and perspectives. This could mean poems that explore doubt in the truth. Is there something you’ve never quite accepted as fact, an uncertainty that’s continued to sit with you? 

You could be inspired by a long-held family belief, that conversation about your great-grandmother at the dinner table, a neighbourhood rumour. Or by the question of whether that photo or video you’re looking at is legitimate or AI-generated, a larger uncertainty about how we’re perceiving the world.

You may want to respond to doubt as an experience. What is the physical sensation of doubt?  Where does it sit in your body? How does a doubtful tongue speak? How do doubtful legs move through the day?

The deepest rooted dream  of a tree is to walk, even just a little way.  A phobia is a ritual of not-doing. It did not  feel like a ritual but an injunction  from a distant government, one we  forgot we’d voted for.  – Emily Berry, from Unexhausted Time

We are interested in the variations of doubt, how it shapeshifts, how it changes in rain, how it runs towards the bus stop or away from something.  We want to know how doubt behaves when it’s left alone, where it sleeps, the noises it makes in the dark, how it moves and takes up space. What it tells you in the quiet moments, how it speaks as you stand on a busy street looking out.

Since our separation I have been spilling  ink on lined pages, wondering what stopped  working when the plates were put away and  how many times we asked with water in our eyes  what we wanted if it wasn’t art on the wall  in the house by the sea?  – Raymond Antrobus, Dynamic Disks, 1933

You may not want to approach doubt as an inhibitor. What happens when you venture into unknown territory, moving beyond the uncertainty of whether your work will be recognised or your pursuit will ultimately achieve its goal? Perhaps you’re drawn to the trendsetters, the pioneers who overcame doubt to be the first to do it, and the ramifications of their success. Then there is the wider contrast between doubt and certainty. We exist in a time when growing numbers of leaders offer increasingly brutal brands of ‘certainty’ and, in many cases, imply that certainty about them and their leadership is more important than any particular ideas or principles they are putting forward.

We’re interested in poems that express what we don’t know – and explore the answers that are currently (and, in some cases, may always be) out of reach.

Including the biggest doubts of all: the great questions of our existence, such as whether there is an afterlife or a higher power beyond us, or the existence of a wider universe.

Send us poems that find language for, and bring into being, things which feel unknowable. 

Katie Dunstan, David Floyd, and Francis-Xavier Mukiibi

Editors, Magma 98

HOW TO SUBMIT 

• The submissions window for Magma 98: Doubt is open 1st Nov – 31st Nov 2026
• We welcome poems that have not been previously published in print, online, or broadcast.
• We accept simultaneous submissions, but please withdraw your submission or contact us if it is accepted for publication somewhere else first.
• You may submit up to 4 previously unpublished poems: ONLINE via Submittable in a single Word document, OR BY POST to Magma 98 Submissions, 23 Pine Walk, Carshalton, SM5 4ES. Postal submissions are accepted from the UK and Ireland only. Postal submissions are not acknowledged until a decision is made.