WE HAVE A WINNER!

The competition closed June 14th 2009.

Just to remind you all of the winner's prize:

1) Publication of your collected works in perfect-bound up to 160 pages

2) A publishing contract with erbacce-press

3) Generous royalties

4) Your own dedicated Sales-Page

5) 10 free copies of your book

THE PRIZE IS WORTH IN TOTAL AT LEAST A THOUSAND POUNDS STERLING!

AND IT IS ENTIRELY FREE TO ENTER! THE JUDGES WERE SO

IMPRESSED BY THE HIGH QUALITY OF THE ENTRIES THAT

WE ARE MAKING THIS AN ANNUAL COMPETITION

THIS means that every single year a New Poet WILL be launched

world-wide in what we believe to be the only totally FREE competition ever!

The Judges would like to make special mention of the following poets whose work was of an exceptionally high standard: Gloria Fontanez, Eleanor Clare, Julia Hastain, Misti Rainwater-Lites, Constance Stadler, Jeffery Beam, Lahari Chatterji, Chris Major, Felino Soriano and Dee Rimbaud...

We ended up with four poets in our shortlist: A D Winans, Duane Locke, Puma Perl and Sam Smith. It wasn't easy to arrive at a winner but in the end the judges unanimously agreed that the winner, whose work was outstanding, original and evocative should be:

PUMA PERL

We couldn't separate the three runners up so we have offered each the opportunity to have a chapbook published for free with erbacce-press. We'd like to thank everyone who entered. It has been exhausting but also thrilling to read through all the hundreds and hundreds of quality entries. Poetry IS alive and well in the world and we at erbacce-press will continue to ensure that poets are paid for their work by supplying generous royalties and we'll also ensure that no poet is ever asked to pay anything to have their work read or to pay 'entry fees' or 'reading fees'. To ask the poet to pay to have his or her work read is WRONG and we guarantee that future poetry competitions such as the annual erbacce-prize for poetry will be entirely free to enter.

Spread the word; remember that erbacce stems from the

Italian for 'weed'; we intend to take over the poetry garden!

A link from your website to

www.erbacce-press.com

would help us spread the word.