September 20th – 27th 2016

At around noon each Tuesday (GMT), from the 12th of April 2016, five words are posted on this competition page. Entrants have one week to compose and submit poems that include all five words given for the week.

The competition runs for 42 weeks, until the 31st of January 2017.

A prize of 500 euros will be awarded to one winner, and if available, invited to read at Ó Bhéal’s tenth anniversary event on Monday 10th of April, 2017 (an additional travel fee of 100 euro plus B&B accommodation will be provided for this). The shortlisted poems and winning entry will also be published in Five Words Vol X – the next annual anthology of five word poems, to be launched at the same event. A shortlist of twelve poems including the overall winner will be announced by the first week of March 2017.

The five words offered each week for 2016-17 are sourced from the audiences of the fourth year of (fifty) Five Word Challenges, which were held each Monday evening during 2010-11 at Ó Bhéal – with a selection of extra words added due to deletion of duplicates, colloquialisms, etc.

Entry is open to all countries. Poems cannot exceed 50 lines in length (including line breaks), and must include all five words listed during this week. A modicum of poetic license is acceptable. As long as the original spelling is intact within your syntax, you’re welcome to pluralise, join or even split the word to form two adjoining words. There is no limit on submission quantities, although each payment and submission will need to be made separately. Entries to be sent no later that 12pm on Tuesday.

Submissions carry a 5 euro entrance fee.

Payment should be made via this paypal button before continuing.

For postal entries, please print out and complete the submission form, and post together with your attached poem (in which nothing other than the title and poem appear). As is usual practice, all entries are logged and numbered by our allocated filter programmers so that judges cannot see the names of the entrants. Email entries should be sent via the email address given above, not via the submissions [at] obheal [dot] ie email link on the home page, which is only for non-competition entries, written and performed live during each Monday evening event – from words offered up in random by the audience.