There's still plenty of time to enter a Nature poetry competition organised by the RSPB and The Rialto poetry magazine.  The deadline is 30 April 2012 – and according to the Rialto, which recently celebrated with relief the renewal of an Arts Council grant for three years, there hasn't been that big a rush of entries so far. The term “nature poetry” will apparently have a very wide interpretation by the judges, who are  Sir Andrew Motion, former poet laureate, who names Wordsworth and Edward Thomas among his favourite, and Mark Cocker, whose  seven books include Birds Britannica and Crow Country, which won the New Angle Prize (2009) and was shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize (2008). With photographer David Tipling, he is now working on a study of the cultural importance of birds worldwide, Birds and People.

The first prize is £1,000, second £400, third £300. An additional prize will be a personal tour with Mark Cocker of cherished wildlife places in East Anglia. The winning poems will be published in The Rialto. Full details