The Ted Hughes Award for New Work in Poetry will be awarded to the poet who, in the judges’ opinion, has made the most outstanding contribution to poetry in 2014.

Eligibility

• The award is made to a poet who in the judges’ opinion has made the most outstanding contribution to poetry in 2014. The poet must be resident in the UK or have UK Nationality.
• Eligible works should have first appeared in the public domain between the 1 January and 31 December 2014.
• A posthumous work will be considered if it entered the public domain within a year of the poet’s death.
• Eligible works include, but are not limited to: poetry collections (for adults or children), individual published poems, radio poems, verse translations, verse dramas, verse novels, libretti, film poems and poetry in public art.
• For work to be eligible, some appropriate documentary evidence must be available for the judges to be able to assess – for example a script, CD, DVD, podcast or photograph.
• Self-published work is not eligible. 

How to make a recommendation

• Recommendations can only be made by members of the Poetry Society or Poetry Book Society, giving their membership number.
• Recommendations should be submitted on an official Ted Hughes Award form. Forms are available online.
• Poets may not recommend their own work.
• No individual may make more than one recommendation for the 2014 Ted Hughes Award.
• Note: Recommendations are not votes. That is to say, recommendations help bring work to the judges’ attention and play a vital role in helping the judges gauge the impact the work has had.
• The judges’ decision is final.
• The names of those making recommendations will not be published.