Free entry · £50 prize · Submissions close 1 November 2026

Could a poem become a script? Could its voices become characters, its images come alive through movement, its words create a world on stage?

 

The Scratch Theatre is bringing a small company of performers together to explore the theatrical possibilities within poetry—and we’re inviting you to send us your words.

 

What we’re exploring

Imagine an ensemble becoming the landscape of a poem. Two voices becoming a scene between two people. A line whispered from the floor, or spoken while falling backwards into another performer’s arms.

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Through movement, character, props, costumes and ensemble performance, we’ll explore how deeply theatre can enter a poem—and how performance can reveal something unexpected within its words. This is our first research and development stage, leading to an event in December.

You don’t need to write a theatrical poem. We welcome existing poems and new work with images, emotions or possibilities you would love to see brought to life.

 

The prize

The winning poem will receive £50. The winner and selected runners-up will have their poems interpreted for the stage and professionally filmed. Poets will be credited wherever we share their work, including on our social media.

Entries will be judged by a poet, a theatre maker and one of our creative facilitators.

 

What you can submit

• Up to two poems per person, each less than one page long.

• Any theme, with existing poems and new work welcome.

• Poems in one voice or two voices.

• Your own original work, without graphic violence, sexually explicit content or expressions of hate.

We’re particularly interested in poems in two voices: two people, perspectives or characters speaking within one poem. They might answer, interrupt, contradict or echo each other—or sometimes speak together. You can label the voices or arrange them side by side. For example, two old friends remembering the same night differently; a person talking to the sea and the sea answering; or your younger self in conversation with who you are today.

 

How to enter

Email your poem or poems to writing@thescratchtheatre.co.uk by 1 November 2026.

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Include your name, the name you would like credited, and confirmation that the work is your own and that you are happy for it to be interpreted theatrically, performed, filmed and shared with credit if selected.

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Entry is completely free.

Send us your poem. Let’s find the theatre inside it.