DIRT is running a poetry competition! Scroll down this page for more information. Submit here.

About DIRT plantable poetry

Poets Alice Willitts and JLM Morton teamed up to release DIRT: plantable ecopoetry collaborations that literally go back into the earth.

DIRT commissions pairs of poets to write collaborative poems in response to climate science, and models Earth-positive publishing. Previous commissions include poets Clare Pollard paired with Anglia Ruskin student Freya Sacksen, and Alycia Pirmohamed paired with Hannah Copley.

Why is planting poems a good idea?
Following in the footsteps of artists who make work that vanishes back into the place it came from, Alice and JLM Morton wanted to send exceptional poems back into the earth we all write about.

When we partnered to propose DIRT we wondered if anyone would be interested in our experimental, plantable poetry. We decided to launch the idea with a crowd funder because we hoped it was a great way to find support and maybe start a community that would be interested in the project longterm.

Thanks to that amazing crowd-sourced support, we were able to research carbon-positive publishing and run a prototype collaboration. We print with vegetable inks on compostable paper accompanied by seeds collected from Alice’s own garden or the city-pollinators project she co-founded, On The Verge Cambridge. Planted, the seeds soak up more carbon than is used to post the publications to you, which is how DIRT makes planet-positive publications. - Alice Willitts

Ephemeral and brilliant, this plantable poetry idea chimes with other projects like Future Library where the books are written now but will only be printed once the trees needed for the paper have grown in a hundred years time.

DIRT’s editor Alice Willitts has also introduced the Seeds in the DIRT Imaginarium, a new collaborative, forward thinking project funded with £10k from the Sustainable Futures Fund from Anglia Ruskin University’s Global Sustainability Institute.

Once upon a time... I had an idea for gathering together writers who inspire me… We would collectively redesign the publishing of our poems and stories… create fabulous, weirder, queerer, boundary-crossing, collaborative thinking… and remove the carbon footprint of our industry. - Alice Willitts

Buy a copy:

Hertz by Hannah Copley & Alycia Pirmohamed

Loops by Clare Pollard & Freya Sacksen

DIRT is holding it's first competition ever!

DIRT PLANTABLE POETRY COMPETITION: JUNE 1 - 14, 2026

We’re inviting poets who care deeply about our living planet and want to experience writing in collaboration with another poet to submit work for our first DIRT plantable poetry competition pamphlet.

DIRT commissions pairs of poets to write collaborative poems in response to climate science. Our project models Earth-positive publishing.

Previous commissions include poets Clare Pollard paired with Anglia Ruskin student Freya Sacksen, and Alycia Pirmohamed paired with Hannah Copley.

“ The whole collaboration experience was so lovely that we carried on writing and talking about it afterwards. Honestly, DIRT’s one of the most magical things to be a part of, just do it! Being involved in a DIRT collaboration and getting to work with Alycia and Alice really has changed how I think about writing and my creative practice.” ~ Hannah Copley

DIRT plantable poetry is published by Dialect Press with support from the Laura Kinsella Foundation, the Global Sustainability Institute at Anglia Ruskin University and our marvellous, individual reader-supporters.

PRIZES

FIRST PRIZE: Six winning poets will be paired to write a collaborative poem for publication in our first DIRT plantable poetry competition pamphlet.

RUNNERS UP: Ten shortlisted poets (including the winners) will be paid £20 for their selection poem to be published online with Dialect Press, and offered six months free membership in the Meadow, Dialect’s writing collective.

• DIRT’s commissioning editor, Alice Willitts, with guest editor and Foyle Young Poet, Joe Wright, will choose a shortlist of ten poets. Shortlisted poets will be notified by email in July.
• All shortlisted poets will be paid £20 for their selected poem, which will be published online with Dialect Press and offered six months free membership on Meadow, Dialect’s writing collective.
• From the shortlist, six winning poets will be paired by the editors, creating three pairs of poets. Alice and Joe will pair the winners by looking for contrasting resonances where they think interesting poetry will emerge from the connections.
• Each pair will be given the same piece of climate science to write a collaborative poem, with mentoring and editorial support by experienced collaborative poet and DIRT editor, Alice Willitts.
• The poems will be published in a competition edition of DIRT plantable poetry pamphlet.
• In addition to mentoring and collaborating, the winning poets will receive 3 copies of the competition DIRT pamphlet.
• There will be an online launch 23 September, 2026.

Submissions open 1 June and close midnight GMT on 14 June 2026

Please submit poems that best showcase your style. If you enter as a collaborating pair, the same applies, send us your best poems. We want to read your voice, see what draws your attention in the world.

JUDGES

DIRT editor Alice Willitts is a poet and plantswoman from the Fens. Her mission is to create work that collaborates with Nature without costing the Earth. Kiss My Earth (Blue Diode) is her second poetry collection, her first collection With Love won the Live Cannon collection competition and her first pamphlet Dear, won the Magma pamphlet competition. Her work has been longlisted for the National Poetry Prize and shortlisted for the Ivan Juritz Prize. She is co-editor of Bending The Arc, a magazine of writing for better futures and shares new, thrutopian poetry in a co-authored pamphlet, We’ll Meet You There (Dialect Press). www.alicewillittspoet.uk

Guest editor Joe Wright is an emerging poet from the North Pennines. He’s a T.S. Eliot Prize Young Critic for The Poetry Society, was a Foyle Young Poet of the Year 2022, came second in the Young Northern Writers’ Awards 2022 and is a member of The Writing Squad. He studies English at Magdalene College, Cambridge.

SUBMITTING YOUR POEMS

We welcome work from all genres of poetry and are actively seeking the widest diversity of voices.

Please submit a poem on any theme that best showcases your style. If you enter as a collaborating pair, the same applies, send us your best poem. We want to read your voice, see what draws your attention in the world.

Entry £6 for the first poem and £4 for subsequent poems. You can submit up to six poems and pay the appropriate fees below.

If entering 1 poem, please submit your poem as a PDF and put your name on the page.

If entering more than 1 poem, please put all your poems in a single PDF document, starting each poem on a new page, and put your name on each page.

If entering as an existing pair of collaborators, please submit as above with both names on each page and pay the appropriate fees.

Submissions open on 1 June, 2026 Submissions close at midnight GMT on 14 June 2026To be reminded when the submissions window is closing, add the date to your diary.

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