Regeneration: Poetry Exploring the Environment
Following the success of the New Beginnings project in 2021, the Spectrum project in 2022, the Kinship project in 2023, Building Bridges in 2024 and the Interwoven project in 2025, The Regeneration project seeks to expand the conversation. We want the resulting anthology – scheduled for November – to be a wide-ranging exploration of nature, a cry for change and a celebration of the forces for good all around us.
About the Project
Climate collapse. Culture wars. Physical wars. The global picture in these Roaring Twenties can leave little to inspire and uplift, and rhetoric is rife aiming to stoke fires of hate and distrust. But poetry – like many art forms, but perhaps more so than any other – is universal, and the power to unite.
It is so easy to be overwhelmed by the negative news churn surrounding the climate emergency, and in the slew of statistics it’s all too easy to forget how we come into the picture. Raising voices from around the globe, from across continents and myriad walks of life, Regeneration refocuses the lens on the complex relationship we have with nature. This is a powerful and wide-ranging exploration, a cry for change and a celebration of the forces for good all around us.
Please do help us to get the word out – on social media (#RegenerationPoetry) and in real life, as we’d love to reach people who aren’t on social media sites too! If you know someone who would be interested in the project, please share this page with them! Click here to email them →
Support the Project
If, like us, you think this is a really important project, we’d love your help!
This project is going to need money to get off the ground. If you’re able to, please pre-order the anthology or consider becoming a sponsor of the project – in return we’ll add your name to a special ‘thanks’ page in the book, and you can choose your level of support and receive various perks, including tote bags, paper/e/hardback editions and more. If you prefer, you can donate anonymously without reward via PayPal.
Meet the Judges
Photo © Jo Cotterill
Miriam Halahmy
Miriam was a teacher for 25 years, and, having worked with refugees and asylum seekers in schools, her writing engages with historical and contemporary issues that affect children across time – most notably the plight of refugees. Her young-adult novel, Hidden, was a Sunday Times Children’s Book of the Week, was nominated for the Carnegie Medal and has been adapted for the stage. Saving Hanno, Miriam’s new book, is about a boy who comes on the Kindertransport and reflects on the grief and loss experienced by refugee children.
Photo © Tom Denbigh
Tom Denbigh
Tom Denbigh lives in Bristol with an obscene number of books. He is the first Bristol Pride Poet Laureate and a BBC 1Extra Emerging Artist Talent Search winner. He has performed at the Royal Albert Hall and festivals around the UK, and has brought poetry to Brighton and London Prides. He is a producer at Milk Poetry and has facilitated writing workshops for groups of students from the UK and abroad (he is particularly proud of his work with queer young people). His debut collection …and then she ate him is out now with Burning Eye Books.
Photo © Reshma Ruia
Reshma Ruia
Reshma Ruia is an award-winning author and poet. She has a PhD and Master’s in Creative Writing from Manchester University. She has published two novels (Still Lives and Something Black in the Lentil Soup with Renard Press), a poetry collection and a short story collection. Her work has appeared in international anthologies and journals, and she has had work commissioned by the BBC. She is the co-founder of The Whole Kahani – a writers’ collective of British South Asian writers. Born in India and brought up in Rome, her writing explores the preoccupations of those who possess a multiple sense of belonging.
Photo © Will Dady
Will Dady
Will Dady grew up in the wonderfully named Great Snoring in North Norfolk, and now lives in London. He is the Publisher at Renard Press, which he set up in 2020, and the founder of the Indie Press Network. An award-winning, climate-positive publisher, Renard’s raison d’être is to ‘publish beyond the mainstream’: providing a platform for stories and voices that have traditionally been marginalised or missing from the canon. He thinks the independent publishing sector is the key driver of diversity within the publishing industry, and reports on the indie scene for Spiracle Audiobooks.
Details and entry
Timeline
Competition opens on Friday 8th May 2026
Closes on Sunday 28th June 2026.
Longlist to be announced 28th August 2026
Shortlist announced 25th Sept 2026
Winners announced at a virtual launch on Monday 16th November – save the date!
Who can enter
Entry cost: free
Open to: anyone, anywhere, any age. We’re particularly keen to hear from those who do not feel their voice or community/ies have been well represented in traditional or mainstream media.
Poetry length: up to 100 lines or 750 words (whichever is lower), only one previously unpublished (see rules) poem per applicant. Refer to rules in full before submitting.
Prizes
1st prize: £200
2nd prize: £100
Special mentions at the judges’ discretion.
All of the poems on the shortlist will be published in a volume, everyone included will receive a copy of the book, and all are invited to take place in an online launch event.
Poets, what we want to read
Send us your poems exploring people and nature, answering the overall title of ‘Regeneration’. Some poems might be upbeat, perhaps exploring very specific positive news stories around rewilding – taking in the birth of the first wild bison in the UK for 1,000 years, say, or buzzing with honey bees thriving in a concrete jungle. Others might have a darker thread, finding new shoots in seemingly ravaged landscapes. As ever we’re keen to see a wide variety of interpretations, so long as the poetry answers the theme and has an element of the intertwining of people and nature. We look forward to reading your work!
Please note: we do not accept submissions created by or with the help of AI.
Rules
We want to keep this fairly simple and open – the only rules we have for entry are below.
- There is no minimum (or maximum) age requirement for entry, but please bear in mind that if you’re under 18 you legally need to have parental or guardian consent to enter. Anyone can submit, but please read the brief first and make sure that your poem and entry fits.
- The work must be completely your own, and must not have been made by or with the assistance of artificial intelligence systems (‘AI’, by which we mean large language generative models – for the avoidance of doubt: spell-check is fine; any words generated by or with help from a system like ChatGPT are not). Why? Because these platforms are created and profit by the wholesale ‘alleged’ stealing of others’ creative work; because they are not capable of imagination, which we place a premium on; and because our anthologies seek to celebrate the breadth of human talent and experience.
- We ask that your poem is previously unpublished at the time of submission, and kindly request that you don’t submit it elsewhere in the mean time. Why? Because we’re really after poems that are fresh out of the door (fine if you’ve published the poem on your Instagram, but a bit different if it’s been in a collection and three anthologies already). And because, while we only ask for non-exclusive volume rights (ie if you’re shortlisted you sign a short agreement with Renard giving us permission to publish your poem in the anthology), some other publishers are less transparent and have broader clauses, so you run the risk of having to withdraw if another publisher has accepted your work and you’ve given them exclusivity.
- Please do not include photographs or illustrations.
- Please only submit once – we will only consider your first entry if you enter again.
- Entries must be received by 11.59PM on Sunday 28th June 2026 to be considered.
Enter
Entry is via this Google form. We hope that this is straightforward, but if you have any queries please don’t hesitate to be in touch.
You can also sign up to our newsletter to hear about future competitions!
