Cavafy Prize

The C.P. Cavafy Poetry Prize is one of two annual contests sponsored by Poetry International honoring a single poem of any length. Editors of Poetry International will judge each submission and select the prize winner. The winning poem is awarded a cash prize of $1000 and publication. Entry fee is $15. You may submit a maximum of three poems with a $15 entry fee. Each additional poem will require $3 extra.

We regret that we can no longer accept hard-copy submissions nor do we accept submissions through email. Please submit via Submittable.​

All entries are considered for publication. Please refer to our contest guidelines for more information.

Contest is open September 1 to December 1.

Please feel free to contact us at poetryintl@gmail.com with any questions or concerns.

Congratulations to the co-winners of the 2025 C.P. Cavafy Prize:

Roger Craik 
“Swallows” and “Burying My Father’s Letters”

Weijia Pan
“Adulthood” and “Time is the Phenomenon of Love”

Ansel Elkins
“To Janus” and “Ode to Hoops”

The prize-winning poems were chosen by judge, Sandra Alcosser, and will appear in a forthcoming issue of Poetry International.

About the winners:

Roger Craik is English by birth, educated at British universities, and lives in Ashtabula, Ohio. His poems have been published in England, Australia and America, in translation in Bulgaria, Romania, and Belarus. He has written four full-length books of poetry, of which the most recent is In Other Days (2021). In 2024 he won second prize in the Pablo Neruda International Poetry Competition, and won the Letter Review Prize. He is an American citizen and enjoys watching the birds throughout the seasons.

Weijia Pan is the author of Motherlands (Milkweed Editions, 2024), selected by Louise Glück for the 2023 Max Ritvo Poetry Prize and winner of the 2025 Levis Reading Prize. A poet and translator from Shanghai, China, his poems have appeared in the Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day, AGNI, Boulevard, The Cincinnati Review, The Georgia Review, Poetry Daily, and elsewhere. He is the recipient of the 2026 Benjamin H. Danks
Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and is currently a Stegner Fellow at Stanford University.

Past Winners