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Hopeful Haiku Competition 2025 – Results

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Our latest free-to-enter writing competition attracted almost 200 entries, and after reading them, we feel a lot more hopeful about things than we did before. We are very pleased to announce the winner as David Beattie, who has won the £50 prize plus a free entry to our Poetry Competition (which is open to entries until 17th July 2025 and has a first prize of £1,200… DETAILS HERE).

Here is David’s winning haiku, followed by those that made the shortlist. Thank you to everyone who entered; you brightened our spirits with your beautiful words.

Winner

Deus Ex Machina or, Overcoming Existential Dread

by David Beattie

‘Life is finite. Yet…’
God paused, turned away and sighed,
‘…love is eternal.’

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Author bio: David is just a bloke from a council estate in Burnley, Lancashire. He is (or rather was) unpublished and is currently finding the love to write again.

Shortlist

Here are the entries/poets that were selected for the shortlist:

  • Mind the Gap by Tracy Davidson
  • Apostasy by Peter Kelly
  • A Chance by Marc Hyder
  • HORIZONS by Jane Sparrow-Niang
  • Cashmere by Monica Kakkar
  • GRIT by Gail Lawler
  • possibility by Esther Markov
  • Resilience by Mike Everley
  • As peace dawns by Laura Besley
  • A School Photo by Belanjoi Besa
  • Ocean Odyssey by Lucy Stubbings

Thank you to everyone who entered. If you’d like to find out about our upcoming writing competitions as well as writing prompts, book recommendations and more, sign up to our newsletter below (we send one each month and will never share your email address or any other information with anyone else).

Also, if you find NewWriters.org.uk interesting or useful, please consider donating at our Ko-fi.com page. We’ll use any donations to offer more free competitions (with bigger prizes) and to fund more free entries to our paid competition to those on low incomes. 

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