Building Bridges: Poetry Bridging Communities
Following the success of the New Beginnings project in 2021, the Spectrum project in 2022 and the Kinship project in 2023, Building Bridges seeks to continue celebrating identity and community through poetry. We want the resulting anthology – scheduled for November – to be an exploration of community and belonging, a firm but joyous collection that celebrates what unites us, resolute in the face of those who seek to divide us.
In a year that has seen wars raging, the news cycle leaves little to raise hopes of unity, trust and empathy. Acts of violence committed in the name of – or against – communities and cultures are on the rise, fuelled by increasingly divisive political rhetoric. How vital, then, to unite and raise our voices in an art form that is shared the world over, and to use this platform to celebrate the rich tapestry of humanity and build bridges across divides.
Building Bridges is a poetry anthology that seeks to provide a platform for stories and voices that have been marginalised, and to celebrate the great diversity and rich variation in the identities and communities of people from around the world and from a huge cross-section of walks of life.
Details
Competition opened on Thursday 30th May; closed on Sunday 30th June
Longlist announced 18th September
Shortlist announced 2nd October
Winners announced at a virtual launch on Friday 15th November
Entry cost: free
Open to: anyone, anywhere, any age. We’re particularly keen to hear from those who do not feel the aspect of community/ies they’re writing about to be represented in traditional or mainstream media. Rules →
Poetry length: up to 100 lines or 750 words (whichever is lower), only one (must be previously unpublished) poem per applicant.
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 will be invited to take place in an online launch event.
Competition closed. Sign up to our newsletter to hear about future competitions!
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 (including Still Lives 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 © Matt Dady-Leonard
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 founded in 2020. A publisher of classic and contemporary fiction, non-fiction, theatre and poetry, Renard’s raison d’être is to ‘publish beyond the mainstream’: providing a platform for stories and voices that have traditionally been marginalised. The New Beginnings project was set up in 2021 as an antidote to the less pleasant aspects of the pandemic, and its huge success in attracting stirring entries has made these projects a firm fixture in Renard’s publishing programme.
Support the Project
If, like us, you think this is a really important project, we’d love your help! Please do help us to get the word out – on social media (#BuildingBridgesPoetry) and in real life, as we’d love to reach people who aren’t on Facebook or Twitter (X), too!
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. Sponsor →
If you know someone who would be interested in the project, please share this page with them! Click here to email them →
Sponsor the Project
Digital
Supporter
£10 | 4 backers
- The e-book edition of the anthology once it’s in print
- Your name on a special ‘thanks’ page in the book
- 50% discount (and free UK postage) on a copy of the print edition of the anthology
Print & Digital
Supporter
£20 | 7 backers
- The anthology in print once it’s published
- The e-book edition too
- A set of postcards with the cover art
- A Renard Press tote bag
- Your name on a special ‘thanks’ page in the book
Hardcore
Supporter
£50 | 4 backers
- A hardback edition of the anthology
- A paperback edition of the anthology too
- The e-book edition too
- A set of postcards with the cover art
- A Renard Press tote bag
- Your name on a special ‘thanks’ page in the book
Patron
£100 | 1 backers
- Two hardback editions of the anthology
- Two copies of the paperback too
- A mystery gift book from Renard’s list
- The e-book edition too
- A set of postcards with the cover art
- A Renard Press tote bag
- Your name on a special ‘thanks’ page in the book
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.
Competition closed. Sign up to our newsletter to hear about future competitions!
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 your own, and we ask that you don’t submit it elsewhere in the mean time.
- 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 30th June 2024 to be considered.
Longlist
18/09/24: We’re delighted to announce the longlist (100 poems) for the Building Bridges competition, which you can find below (sorted by poem title – you can search this page with ctrl/cmd + ‘F’ to find a name). The shortlist will be published in a few weeks’ time… In the mean time, please consider becoming a sponsor to help us bear the costs of this important project.
- ‘[Enter your own title]’ by Manjot Dhaliwal
- ‘A Calculated Step’ by Oz Hardwick
- ‘An Emerald Wish’ by Bernadette
- ‘A Man in a Bowler Hat’ by Steve Baggs
- ‘Advice to Interviewers from an Autistic Candidate’ by Creana Bosac
- ‘Africafé’ by Karin Molde
- ‘Almost’ by Heinrich Beindorf
- ‘Antici-’ by Jules the Poet
- ‘Approximation of Latin American’ by Angela Acosta
- ‘Art Form’ by Koushik Banerjea
- ‘Artists’s Camp, India 1998’ by Michele Noble
- ‘As the Last Song Begins to Play’ by Thea Smiley
- ‘ASC’ by DUGGAN
- ‘Assembling Bridges’ by Sylvia Telfer
- ‘Balancing Acts’ by Finola Scott
- ‘Beguiling Bridges’ by Naila Ali
- ‘Behind Closed Doors’ by Mark Lavery
- ‘Between Halifax and Bradford’ by Atar Hadari
- ‘Birds and Bones all Live in Houses’ by Yukti Narang
- ‘Black Jew’ by Stevina Southwell
- ‘Blood and Soil’ by Rebecca G. Biber
- ‘Bug at Duckpool’ by Dulani Kulasinghe
- ‘Burning Bridges’ by Laura Chouette
- ‘Care Givers on a Break in a Café’ by Sheena Hussain
- ‘Children of Irish Descent’ by Roisin Harkin
- ‘Collide: Astrophysics in the Time of Genocide by Bombing (and all Other Times)’ by Ivy Raff
- ‘Colour Theory’ by Lisa Munday
- ‘Dragon Lines’ by Dave Wynne-Jones
- ‘Early Risers Constellation’ by Pippa Little
- ‘Everything Is Going to Be Amazing, or, How I Survived Shielding by “Ranting with Joy”’ by Hazel Meredith-Lloyd
- ‘Fair Weather Dreaming’ by Colin Dardis
- ‘Feet under the Brontë Falls’ by L.J. Ireton
- ‘First Time Living’ by Ali Webb
- ‘Fridays in Lockdown’ by Jan Swann
- ‘God Talks’ by Ansuya
- ‘Hello, I’m Nobody’ by Suvechchha Saha
- ‘Holding on’ by Emily Reynolds
- ‘Hosting the Beckhams’ by S.N. Roy
- ‘I am not Bear Grylls’ by Daphne Sampson
- ‘I Have Heard that in Some Languages’ by Tim Kiely
- ‘I Just Shat Myself in the Car’ by Anonymous
- ‘Immigration’ by Sandeep Kumar Mishra
- ‘In the Kitchen of the World’ by Gerald Ewa
- ‘Interns at Fertility Clinic’ by Kinshuk Gupta
- ‘It’s Only a Blackbird’ by Marcus Tickner
- ‘Late Diagnosed’ by Jessica Anne Rose
- ‘Legends of the Sun: A Hybrid Ghazal of Migration’ by Hana Ormara
- ‘Life Is Short’ by Eithne Cullen
- ‘Linked Friends’ by Peter Hill
- ‘Malagasy Roomies’ by Taffeta Chime
- ‘Mapping Meaning’ by Ryan Service
- ‘Masks’ by Sandra Noel
- ‘Memoria’ by Delilah Dennett
- ‘Memories of Matriarchal Days’ by Geetha Nair G.
- ‘Monday Morning, 10 a.m.’ by Ellie Herda-Grimwood
- ‘Mumbai’s New Bridge’ by Suchita Parikh-Mundul
- ‘Murmurations’ by Roslyn Weaver
- ‘My Boy’s Blood’ by Raina Muriithi
- ‘My Mother’s Tongue’ by Victoria D’Cruz
- ‘My Uncle Said We all Needed Someone to Remember that We Lived’ by María Castro Domínguez
- ‘No Apologies’ by Rachel Burns
- ‘Now in New Al-Jura’ by Cory Collins
- ‘Now We’re Talking’ by Emilio D. Puerta
- ‘Others Meanwhile Are Neurodivergent’ by Alyson Smith
- ‘Our Lady Star of the Sea’ by Alice Eaves
- ‘Paths Intertwined in Time’ by Hanna Elkaram
- ‘Plaited’ by Michèle Clement
- ‘Printing Snow’ by Adam Boržík
- ‘Queer Skin’ by Linnea
- ‘Rainbow Guinness’ by Barry Fentiman Hall
- ‘Riptide’ by Sujatha
- ‘SARA’ by Jaspreet Mander
- ‘Settle over Satiate’ by Kay Saunders
- ‘Silk Road’ by Mira Mookerjee
- ‘Sisters in Revolution’ by John Bowen
- ‘Sources for the History of Bhutan’ by Sekhar Banerjee
- ‘Summer 2024’ by Amara
- ‘Teenager’ by Emma Humphreys
- ‘Thales’ and Pythagoras’ Theorem’ by John Spiegel
- ‘The Allotment Pharmacy’ by Carl Griffin
- ‘The Breach’ by Dianne McPhelim
- ‘The Bride of Arta’ by Deborah Finding
- ‘The First Kingfisher in Iceland’ by Christopher James
- ‘The Guests We Make’ by Devjani Bodepudi
- ‘The House of Refugees’ by Bridgette James
- ‘The Longing for Ignorance’ by Olivia Feilden
- ‘The Octogenarian and the Union’ by Lee Nash
- ‘The Second Time’ by Max Wallis
- ‘Theory of Forms’ by Chalice Am Bergris
- ‘This Is Tree Time’ by Jane Burn
- ‘Thunderstorm’ by Nafisah Tabassum
- ‘To an Ally’ by Suman Gujral
- ‘Transcript: Interview Room 2’ by Abigail Ottley
- ‘Umbellifers’ by Christian Ward
- ‘Village Harvet’ by Glen Wilson
- ‘We Had a Caravan’ by Laila Sumpton
- ‘What If I Had a Homeland?’ by Musa Abdalahmad
- ‘When I Open the Paper’ by Reyzl Grace
- ‘When You Give a Plant to a Teacher’ by Alison Binney
- ‘Why I Paint My Nails’ by Heather
Shortlist
02/10/24: We’re delighted to announce the shortlist (50 poems) for the Building Bridges competition, which you can find below (sorted by poem title). The winners will be announced at an online launch. In the mean time, please consider becoming a sponsor to help us bear the costs of this important project.
- ‘A Calculated Step’ by Oz Hardwick
- ‘A Man in a Bowler Hat’ by Steve Baggs
- ‘Advice to Interviewers from an Autistic Candidate’ by Creana Bosac
- ‘Almost’ by Heinrich Beindorf
- ‘Antici-’ by Jules the Poet
- ‘Art Form’ by Koushik Banerjea
- ‘As the Last Song Begins to Play’ by Thea Smiley
- ‘Behind Closed Doors’ by Mark Lavery
- ‘Birds and Bones all Live in Houses’ by Yukti Narang
- ‘Blood and Soil’ by Rebecca G. Biber
- ‘Bug at Duckpool’ by Dulani Kulasinghe
- ‘Care Givers on a Break in a Café’ by Sheena Hussain
- ‘Collide: Astrophysics in the Time of Genocide by Bombing (and all Other Times)’ by Ivy Raff
- ‘Dragon Lines’ by Dave Wynne-Jones
- ‘Early Risers Constellation’ by Pippa Little
- ‘Feet under the Brontë Falls’ by LJ Ireton
- ‘God Talks’ by Ansuya
- ‘Holding on’ by Emily Reynolds
- ‘I am not Bear Grylls’ by Daphne Sampson
- ‘I Have Heard that in Some Languages’ by Tim Kiely
- ‘In the Kitchen of the World’ by Gerald Ewa
- ‘Interns at Fertility Clinic’ by Kinshuk Gupta
- ‘Legends of the Sun: A Hybrid Ghazal of Migration’ by Hana Ormara
- ‘Memoria’ by Delilah Dennett
- ‘Memories of Matriarchal Days’ by Geetha Nair G.
- ‘Mumbai’s New Bridge’ by Suchita Parikh-Mundul
- ‘My Boy’s Blood’ by Raina Muriithi
- ‘My Mother’s Tongue’ by Victoria D’Cruz
- ‘My Uncle Said We all Needed Someone to Remember that We Lived’ by María Castro Domínguez
- ‘No Apologies’ by Rachel Burns
- ‘Others Meanwhile Are Neurodivergent’ by Alyson Smith
- ‘Our Lady Star of the Sea’ by Alice Eaves
- ‘Queer Skin’ by Linnea
- ‘Riptide’ by Sujatha
- ‘SARA’ by Jaspreet Mander
- ‘Settle over Satiate’ by Kay Saunders
- ‘Sources for the History of Bhutan’ by Sekhar Banerjee
- ‘The Allotment Pharmacy’ by Carl Griffin
- ‘The Bride of Arta’ by Deborah Finding
- ‘The Guests We Make’ by Devjani Bodepudi
- ‘The House of Refugees’ by Bridgette James
- ‘The Second Time’ by Max Wallis
- ‘This Is Tree Time’ by Jane Burn
- ‘To an Ally’ by Suman Gujral
- ‘Transcript: Interview Room 2’ by Abigail Ottley
- ‘Umbellifers’ by Christian Ward
- ‘We Had a Caravan’ by Laila Sumpton
- ‘What If I Had a Homeland?’ by Musa Abdalahmad
- ‘When I Open the Paper’ by Reyzl Grace
- ‘When You Give a Plant to a Teacher’ by Alison Binney
Winners
First place
‘Interns at a Fertility Clinic’ by Kinshuk Gupta
Runner-up
‘When you give a plant to a teacher’ by Alison Binney
Special mentions from the judges
‘Sources for the History of Bhutan’ by Sekhar Banerjee (special mention from both Miriam Halahmy & Reshma Ruia)
‘The second time’ by Max Wallis (special mention from Tom Denbigh)
‘I Am Not Bear Grylls’ by Daphne Sampson (special mention from Will Dady)