DARK HUMOUR, BITTER IRONY
RESULTS
We are pleased to share the results of Dark Humour, Bitter Irony, our latest Dark Poets Club mini challenge.
With over 1,650 submissions from 27 countries, the response to this challenge was exceptional and reflected the wide range of ways poets approach humour, irony and darker subject matter.
The submissions explored satire, absurdity, self-awareness, grief, discomfort, social observation and the strange contradictions that often sit beneath humour. The strongest poems showed a clear understanding of tone, using irony and wit with control, originality and purpose.
Judging was highly competitive. Many poems stood out for their voice, structure, intelligence and impact, which made the final selection process particularly difficult. As with any of our competitions, the aim was not only to identify one winning poet, but also to recognise a wider group of writers whose work strongly captured the theme, amongst out Shortlisted + Honourable Mention selection, below, who will also be published.
❗ If your name is not included within the results, please do not feel disheartened. With over 2,000 submissions, many strong poems could not be included in the final selection. The results reflect a very competitive field and a careful editorial process.
Thank you to every poet who entered and shared their work with us. Your submissions made this a memorable and highly engaging challenge for Dark Poets Club.
Scroll for the full book of results. 🖤
Yours in darkness,
Dark Poets Club Editorial Team
Stay tuned for more updates as we continue to celebrate the poets selected for this challenge as well as announcements for the 5th edition of the Dark Poets Prize.
WINNER
S.D Gould, a poet based in Queensland, Australia, has been selected as the winner of Dark Humour, Bitter Irony for Back Row at My Own Funeral and Terms & Conditions.
His winning poems impressed the judges with their sharp tonal control, dry wit and emotional precision, capturing the spirit of the challenge with originality and restraint. Both pieces balanced humour and darkness in a way that felt intelligent, assured and quietly affecting.
Back Row at My Own Funeral stood out for its strong voice and perspective, while Terms & Conditions used irony and structure to particularly memorable effect. Together, they marked Gould out as a distinctive and highly consistent writer in the final stages of judging.
S.D GOULD:
"Winning the Dark Poets Club prize for Back Row at My Own Funeral and Terms and Conditions feels wonderfully on-brand for someone whose first instinct in the face of existential dread is apparently “make it funnier.”
I’ve always been drawn to writing that lets humour and grief sit at the same table. The kind of work that laughs not because things are light, but because sometimes absurdity is the only honest response to being alive long enough to accumulate love, loss, confusion, awkwardness, memory, and several increasingly concerning coping mechanisms.
Both poems came from that space: trying to look directly at difficult things without stripping them of humanity, irony, or tenderness.
To have these pieces recognised by the Dark Poets Club genuinely means a great deal to me.
Thank you for giving all of our dark, strange, bittersweet writing a place to breathe."
SHORTLIST + HONOURABLE MENTION:
Congratulations to all the incredible poets that participated and to those who made it into our 'Shortlist' + 'Honourable Mentions', whose work has also been selected for publication on Dark Poets Club, (you will be contacted in due course):
FOR THOSE DIGITALLY SAVVY AND WISHING TO SHARE THEIR SHORTLIT OR HONOURABLE MENTION, FEEL FREE TO DOWNLOAD THE CLEAN IMAGE BELOW AND ADD YOUR NAME (BOLD FONT IS ANTON):
