We are proud to bring you the annual prestigious NATIONAL POETRY PRIZE and to announce the winners through OFF THE WALL, on Monday, the 3rd April, at 7.30pm.

The NATIONAL POETRY Competition, now in its third year, is sponsored by Bruce Jack Wines and administered by the NEW CONTRAST LITERARY JOURNAL.

OFF THE WALL is Cape Town’s longest-running poetry gig, now in its 23rd year, and founded by Hugh Hodge.

NEW CONTRAST is the longest-lived literary journal in South Africa, now in its 63rd year of publication.

The competition is open to anyone who is a South African citizen or resident. The winners and the finalists will all be published in the JACK JOURNAL, the biannual magazine published by Bruce Jack Wines. The Jack Journal is a distinguished and esteemed magazine of art poetry, the environment and more.

All poems are judged blind — that is anonymously — so that the judges never know the name of the poet until long after the judging is over. This year the judges faced the daunting task of reading through a staggering 440 poems from over 100 poets.

After each judge has ranked the poems, the three judges meet through the internet to reconcile their choices and draw up first, a short-list of the ten finalist poems. Then, after much more debate, to rank the prize-winning entries. The quality of many poems is high, so there is often a narrow margin of trade-offs to agree on the winners.

Each year we choose a different panel of judges. For the 2023 competition, our judges were Gail Dendy, Geoffrey Haresnape, and Sihle Ntuli. All our judges are themselves distinguished poets and writers.

NEW CONTRAST is the longest-lived literary journal in South Africa, now in its 63rd year of publication. If you haven’t already taken out a subscription, click here before this evening is over and place your order!