This year’s Southword Editor’s Poetry Award has been won by José Buera for the best entry of three poems. The winning poems will be published in issue 50 of Southword (summer 2026) and he will receive €1000. Each entrant for their €24 entry fee will receive a complimentary postage-free, one-year subscription to Southword.
The judge also highlighted three highly commended entries (who will each have two poems published in Southword 50) and twenty-nine commended entries.
Winner
José Buera
the Dominican Republic & UK
José Buera is a Caribbean/Latinx writer from the Dominican Republic. An alumni of the London Library’s Emerging Writers Programme (24/25), his poetry has been anthologised and appears in the Berkeley Poetry Review, F(r)iction, Ink Sweat and Tears, Konch, Magma, Propel, Wasafiri, and elsewhere. José is the founder and curator of Empanada Poetry Salon, a bimestrial gathering of diaspora poets amidst their foods.
Highly Commended
Daniel Carden Nemo
The Netherlands
Jenny Mitchell
UK
Derval Tubridy
dublin, ireland
Commended
Sharon Black
France
David Bleiman
Scotland
Aidan Coyle
Ireland & France
Simon Peter Eggertsen
usa
Billy Fenton
waterford, Ireland
Kate Fenwick
UK
Suzanna Fitzpatrick
UK
Elizabeth Gibson
UK