2009 Winner Dorothy Fryd
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07/02/10
The Search is On to Find the 2010 Canterbury Festival Poet of the Year!
Now an established highlight of the Canterbury Festival calendar, this month sees the launch of the 2010 Canterbury Festival Poet of the Year Competition. The Festival is on the lookout for today’s best writers from all across Kent, and is encouraging them to submit a poem or series of poems to the competition and perhaps be crowned this year’s winner.
With over 200 entries last year, the Festival is encouraging budding poets to send in their poem by the deadline on 15 May. Poems can be on any subject and previous entrants have written poems inspired by a variety of topics, conjuring images of the wilds of Africa and the blustery shoreline of Britain – evoking strong emotions and recalling experiences or creating new narratives with imaginative and compelling use of language.
Once all poems are submitted, an esteemed panel of judges will choose a longlist of entries, which will then be included in a published booklet available to entrants and the general public.
The Competition Final will be held on Thursday 7 October – where the shortlisted poems will be performed and the Poet of the Year title decided. The event will take place in the Dominican Priory, Canterbury, from 8pm – and will whet the appetite for the beginning of this year’s Canterbury Festival, which takes place between Saturday 16- Saturday 30 October. The final will combine the poetry readings with live musical entertainment, and is one of the community literature highlights of the year.
The 2010 judging panel will be chaired by Maggie Harris, a widely published poet and tutor and well known in the area. The 2009 Poet of the Year Dorothy Fryd, writer and performance poet, joins the panel alongside Nick Hunt, Member of the Canterbury Festival Friends Committee who founded the Competition in 2007.
A full set of rules and entry forms are available at the Festival Friends section of this website or from the Festival Office by calling 01227 452853.
Entry is £5 per poem and they should be posted to the Festival office or emailed to info@canterburyfestival.co.uk along with an application form.
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