Competitions and prizes

That is the shape to look for. A competition worth a young writer's time publishes its rules, names the person reading, states the prize, takes only first publication rights, and does not ask the writer or the family for money at any point. Those 5 tests sort almost every scheme a search will turn up.

Which competitions a teenager can actually enter

The competitions a teenager can enter fall into 5 groups, and searching alone will not sort them, because a search for a young writers contest returns a great many American school schemes that are closed to entrants outside a particular state or country.

• National free awards for young writers, such as the Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award, judged by working poets and open across the United Kingdom.
• Challenges from young writer platforms, such as the writing challenges Young Poets Network sets, which are free and publish the work they select.
• Recitation contests, such as Poetry By Heart in schools in England, where the poem is somebody else's and the judging is on delivery, accuracy and choice.
• Festival and language competitions, including the long standing competitions for young people at the Urdd Eisteddfod in Wales, many of them in Welsh.
• Slams and stage heats, where the poem is performed to a time limit and scored by judges pulled from the audience, usually with a route from a local heat to a national final.

School, library, council and festival competitions run all year alongside those and are the easiest first entry anybody has. What is open at any moment is published by the organisations themselves rather than by any central list, so the reliable sources are the bodies: The Poetry Society, the National Poetry Library at the Southbank Centre, the Scottish Poetry Library, Literature Wales, Poetry Ireland and the Arts Council of Northern Ireland all publish what they run or support. Ways a poem reaches other people sets the competition beside the other 4 routes out of the workshop, and Anthologies covers what happens when a prize is publication in a book.

What a competition asks for

A competition asks for less than most entrants expect, and the entry form is normally the whole of it. Expect a line limit, often around 40 lines for a page poem and a time limit of 2 or 3 minutes for a performance heat; a closing date that is not negotiable; an age on the closing date rather than on the entry date, which decides the category; the poem as a separate file, frequently anonymised, because many competitions judge without names; and one contact address for the result. Some ask for the poem to be unpublished, and treat a public post or a video as published, which Submitting a poem sets out in more detail.

Entry fees are where judgement is needed rather than alarm. Open competitions for adults, including the National Poetry Competition, charge a fee that funds the prize money and the judging, and say so on the entry page. Schemes built for under eighteens generally charge nothing at all, and a fee attached to a children's competition deserves a hard look before a penny moves.

A legitimate competition against a paid vanity contest

A legitimate competition and a paid vanity contest can be told apart before entering, and 6 questions do it.

The vanity model works on pride rather than on deception, which is what makes it effective on a fifteen year old who has just written something genuinely good, and on a family who have no reason to doubt it. The poem is printed. The certificate is real. The only false thing is the word selected. Where such a scheme sells books back to families, the rules on misleading and unfair selling in the United Kingdom are published by the Competition and Markets Authority, local Trading Standards services enforce them, and a report goes in through the Citizens Advice consumer service.

How to enter well

Entering well is a short discipline, and it is the same one every time:

1. Check eligibility first, on age, residence and whether the poem counts as unpublished.
2. Read 2 or 3 winning poems from previous years, which are usually free to read.
3. Send the strongest poem rather than the newest one.
4. Follow the format exactly, including anonymising the file where that is asked for.
5. Enter before the last day, because entry systems fail under load on closing night.
6. Note the result date in a diary, and then think about something else.

The honest place a prize has

The honest place a prize has in a writing life is small, and saying so is not modesty. A shortlist is one panel's opinion of one poem on one afternoon, chosen from a pile in which most of the work was good; a different panel would produce a different list, and judges say so routinely when they are asked. Winning at sixteen predicts nothing, and not winning at sixteen predicts nothing either. Spoken word poetry rewards the writers who keep turning up, who read widely, who say the poem out loud until the weak line is audible, and who write the next one while the last one is out being judged.

What a competition is genuinely good for is a deadline, a reader who owes the writer nothing, and occasionally a room. Prizes for young writers often come with the useful part attached, such as a residential course, a mentor or a place on a programme, and those are worth more than the certificate. Enter 1 or 2 a year, take the deadline seriously, take the result lightly, and keep the poems.