Researcher Education and Development Scholarship Conference

Dr Nadya Yakovchuk, University of Surrey, Lecturer in Academic Writing (PGRs) UK; Dr Mike Rose, Grants Advisor, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Netherlands; and Dr Tegan Bradley, Lecturer in Psychology, University of Newcastle, Australia

In our presentation at the REDS Conference 2026, we spoke about the fascinating

responses that doctoral researchers had to our research poetry writing competition ‘Your Project as a Poem’, and our follow-up research project that explored the value of this activity. In that short session we did not have very much time to talk about the practicalities (and fun!) of running the event, so this blog provides some additional background for those interested in replicating the idea

What is the ‘Your Project as a Poem’ competition?

The original competition took place at the University of Surrey (UK) in November 2021 and 2022. We gave our researchers a simple prompt: can you transform your doctoral thesis, journal article or research project into a poem? There was a judging panel of up to four staff members assessing all submissions, with prizes allocated to the winning entries. The idea has now been picked up by Newcastle University (Australia) who are planning their own version of the competition.

How it all started  

Every November we run AcWriMo (Academic Writing Month) for doctoral researchers at Surrey – a month packed with writing retreats, doctoral writing workshops and other bespoke academic writing focused events. We try to find ways to enthuse researchers about writing, encourage them to try something different and introduce an element of fun into their academic writing process.

So back in 2021 we wondered: why not ask them to write a poem about their research? The more we thought about it, the more excited we became about the idea of building a poetry competition into our AcWriMo programme. We had modest expectations at the start and so the buzz and positivity that the competition created very much exceeded our expectations!

The competition set-up

Their original brief that we put together at Surrey was as follows:

Write a poem that describes or responds to your research. It can take any form you like, as long as it has a maximum of 40 lines. Any fixed form or free verse is welcome.

Trying to keep the competition as open as possible to everyone, we didn’t want to prescribe the topic or kinds of poetry, except that it had to connect with their research. (The line limitation was a practical matter so that we would not receive a Paradise-Lost-length study; in the event a few entries did go over but we did not penalise them).

We encouraged researchers from all disciplines to submit their entries, and we provided support and guidance through blogs, creative writing prompts and bespoke workshops. Some people were quite experienced with poetry and really just needed the prompt of the competition itself to get started; others came to it with little experience or considerable nerves, so our initial blog with instructions gave examples of different forms of poems and offered some general advice.

Resources and support for participants

We expected some people to feel that poetry ‘wasn’t for them’, or that sending in a poem could feel exposing or embarrassing. It was therefore important to provide encouragement and pointers. For example, in 2022 our revised competition blog featured a section explaining that many poets started off in completely other fields.

In the second year we also offered an online workshop in creative writing hosted by poet Hajar Mahfoodh who was a doctoral researcher at Surrey at the time, emphasising that poetry comes in many shapes and sizes, and an in-person workshop for developing ideas with Surrey’s poet-in-residence Ian Heames.

Judging

We wanted the participants to feel that what they had produced would be taken seriously, and not just as a novelty, so involving a professional judge felt important. As well as members of the Surrey Doctoral College familiar with the research and with some of our own creative and academic writing experience, we invited Surrey’s poets-in-residence to provide expert reflections on the submissions.

Judging creative writing is notoriously difficult. The judging was mostly an open discussion about which poems were especially memorable and engaging, but we also looked at successful imagery, formal skills or innovation, and how successfully the poem met the brief of connecting the reader to the research project.

Prizes and publicity

Overall we received around 30 submissions across the two years we ran the competition. We offered book vouchers as prizes for the winning poems in several categories (e.g. the overall winner, the best short poem) each year.

The winners, along with their wonderful poems, were announced on our blog (2021 and 2022) and we found some other platforms for sharing the writing, such as the university’s newspaper delivered to local homes. We also shared all the entries via Twitter (as was), receiving many positive comments from readers.

Several participants said they would have liked an in-person performance event, which is something we would certainly have liked to have organised, especially post-Covid.

Adaptations for consideration

We are thrilled that the University of Newcastle, Australia, are considering running this competition for the first time. As a part of the early discussions, some interesting questions were posed (along with our suggestions) that may be helpful for those looking to implement into their own institutions.

• What if we don’t have a poet-in-residence? This is a great opportunity to connect with the community! If you don’t have an academic staff member who specialises in poetry, consider reaching out to your local poetry clubs and writers’ groups to get involved.
• Is the competition only for doctoral researchers, or also Master’s students and other research staff? The original competition was open to everybody involved in research but was mostly utilised by doctoral researchers. Consider the profile and goals of your institution. If the aim is to increase community building, we’d suggest keeping it open to all. Alternatively, you might consider having different categories for different research stages so that doctoral researchers aren’t intimidated by the idea of competing with their supervisors!
• Is there an option for peer voting? Or just the formal judging criteria and panel? Why not both! Voting from the judging panel could determine 1^st, 2^nd and 3^rd place, but a ‘Peer’s choice’ category can also help increase engagement. If taking this route, we do recommend implementing a voting method that limits to peers and not a broader popularity contest (e.g. links distributed via social media). For example, consider embedding the voting method into your institution’s Learning Management System (Canvas, Blackboard, Moodle etc.) so that only other potential entrants can vote.
• Any other recommendations? Some interesting feedback from Surrey participants was a desire for an in-person event where the winners were announced, and potentially the winning poems were read out loud by the authors or a delegate. We think this is a great idea for community building and wellbeing amongst budding researchers!

Final thoughts

As organisers, we had wondered whether some doctoral researchers might be hesitant to enter because they saw the competition as something more suited to creative disciplines than technical ones. To help counter this perception, we provided early support, promoting the activity as something new to try, and placed particular emphasis in the judging on clarity of communication rather than poetic quality in a strictly literary sense. And, as it happened, our overall winner in the first year was from astrophysics!

The overall feedback we received was very positive: the competition allowed some researchers to take respite from the intensity of doctoral study, helped others refocus and find new motivation for their projects, and also opened up new and unexpected possibilities for presenting and publishing their research.

“When I wrote the poem for this project, I had to take a step away from my work and kind of look at it from a bird’s eye perspective… it helped me focus on the specific elements in a much more holistic manner”.

“It gave me a lot of insight into the reality of what I was doing. I saw my research as being acutely necessary”.

We highly recommend this competition as an educational and community-building activity for researchers. Have a go and let us know what you think!