MAGMA POETRY COMPETITION 2025/26

Is 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 2026 11.59pm GMT

 

This year the Judge’s Prize for poems of 11 to 50 lines will be judged by Rishi Dastidar whose poetry has been published by the Financial Times, New Scientist and the BBC, amongst many others. His third collection, Neptune’s Projects (Nine Arches Press), was longlisted for the Laurel Prize, and a poem from it was included in The Forward Book of Poetry 2024. He is also editor of The Craft: A Guide to Making Poetry Happen in the 21st Century (Nine Arches Press), and co-editor ofToo Young, Too Loud, Too Different: Poems from Malika’s Poetry Kitchen (Corsair). He reviews poetry forThe Guardian and is chair ofWasafiri. His latest publication is A hobby of mine (Broken Sleep Books).

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 £300 and third prize £150. 

The three prize-winning poems from each category will be published in Magma 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 2026.

Last years' winners are published in Magma 92 Ownership Issue which you can purchase for £8.50 here. All winning and commended poems are published in a free-to-download PDF here.

The entry fees are £5 for the first poem, £4 for the second poem and £3.50 for the third and each subsequent poem. Magma magazine subscribers benefit from reduced fees: £4 for the first poem, £3 for the second poem, and £2.50 for the third and each subsequent poem. 

You can subscribe to Magma from £22.00 via our Get Magma page.
 

HOW TO ENTER VIA SUBMITTABLE

• You may enter as many poems as you like in each category, but you must submit to each category in separate documents. 
• 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.   
• Do not include your name or any other identifying marks on the poems themselves.    
• 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 via our Get Magma page but you must do this before you enter. 
• The entry fees are £5 for the first poem, £4 for the second and £3.50 for the third and each subsequent poem. Magma magazine subscribers benefit from reduced fees: £4 for the first poem, £3 for the second, and £2.50 for the third and each subsequent poem. 
• The competition closes at 11.59pm GMT on 31 January 2026.

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 2026. 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 95: Architecture

Submissions window open 10th November to 10th December 2025

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Architecture

This issue of Magma grows out of our collaboration with architecture scholars which began during a conference at Christ’s College, University of Cambridge in Spring 2025. The conference, Poetic Spatial Writing invited us to work with architecture scholars and students in order to explore creative approaches within their research, blurring the boundaries between academic and artistic practice. We’re delighted to bring that conversation into Magma 95, through poems and prose that explore structure, space, and the act of construction itself. We hope to share more of this collaborative project in the pages of Magma 95. 

We invite poems that consider architecture both as subject and method – that work through structure, proportion, rhythm, and light. What is a home if not the language we construct within and around ourselves – with bricks, air, arches, and thresholds?

We are looking for poems whose form is inseparable from content; poems that build meaning through their architecture – whether literal or metaphorical, interior or exterior, ruin or revelation. We want to read poems that take us into substantial, inhabitable structures of thought; poems that invite us to walk through their spaces, feeling how syntax, line, and silence hold and release meaning.

We also welcome work that engages with physical or imagined architecture – the spaces we live in, move through, or dream about:

• urban grids, towers, ruins, infrastructures, rooms, and landscapes shaped by human;
• questions of shelter and exposure, boundary and permeability;
• architecture as repositories of memory, the self, social and private experiences and encounters;
• and poems whose very shapes on the page evoke tension, symmetry, or collapse.

We want poems that challenge and trust their readers; that are complex not through obscurity but precision – poems in which every word, every placement, matters.

We look forward to reading your work – your rooms, your ruins, your bridges of language.

Leo Boix & Stav Poleg, Editors, Magma 95: Architecture
 

HOW TO SUBMIT 

• The submissions window for ‘Architecture' is open 10th November – 10th December 2025
• 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 95 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.
• Please read full Submissions Guidelines here.