Call for Short Poems for Public Display

The BIG LIT Weekend Call for short poems:
BIG LIT The Stewartry Book Festival
April 14-17 2016

Poet Chrys Salt and her colleague Chik Duncan would be grateful for short poems of any kind (published or unpublished) to be displayed in high street windows over BIG LIT weekend in the Scottish town of Gatehouse of Fleet.
The poems: “are often left up long after the event and attract punters to The Festival.”
Send in Palatino 12 point font, with your name at the bottom and include acknowledgements for published poems.
For poem length, Chrys says: ‘Sonnet length is good; shorter is even better.’ (Apparently, the windows are small, Georgian ones!)
ASAP would be good but no later than 14 March. 
Please send to Chik Duncan: chik@swet.co.uk
(P.S. I have it on good authority that, if you do send your poems, they will still be eligible for submission elsewhere, as public display does not constitute actual publication.)

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Scarborough Fair anthology seeks submissions

The University of Toronto’s annual print anthology, Scarborough Fair, is accepting Writing and Visual Art through December 31, 2015.

Copied and pasted:

The STRONGEST SUBMISSIONS WILL BE PUBLISHED IN SCARBOROUGH FAIR 48

Please email your submissions to: scarfair@gmail.com with ‘2015 Submission’ and your name in the subject line.

http://www.scarborough-fair.ca/

(Un)natural Poetry Competition

Joint project between Nuffield Council on Bioethics and Apples and Snakes. http://nuffieldbioethics.org/project/naturalness/performance-poetry-collaboration/poetry-competition/
Deadline: Midnight on Sunday 1 November 2015. Open to poets living in the UK. The following is copied and pasted from the website:

We are looking for poems that explore, delve into and reveal the meaning of the words natural, unnatural, nature and similar words in the context of debates about science, technology and medicine.

What do people mean when they say genetic modification is wrong because it’s unnatural, or food that is natural is better for you?

We want to share these poems to engage others in the conversation, so we are looking for poets to perform their work at a public event in London on Monday 30th November 2015. The event will be filmed and shared online.

Respond – Human Rights Poetry Award 2015/2016

This is a free-to-enter competition, to highlight the plight of immigrants and refugees: http://www.uhrsn.org/respond-human-rights-poetry-award/ Entries must be in English. The deadline is 20 November 2015.

The following is copied from the UHRSN website: The Universal Human Rights Student Network (UHRSN) based in Vienna, Austria is organizing its very first human rights poetry contest. Given the plights refugees are facing on a daily basis and the current widespread media coverage of the so-called “refugee crisis in Europe” this year’s theme is

“Refugees and their message to Europe”

UHRSN is convinced that all people should have the right to a life lived with dignity free from fear, persecution and oppression. As widely reported, people in search of this life seeking asylum in European countries are in many instances denied just that – their fundamental rights. UHRSN also aims to utilize the power of poetry and the positive impact words can have to raise awareness for an issue that cannot be ignored. In this sense the poetry competition was established to provide refugees, migrants, students, sympathisers, etc. with an avenue

• to create thought-provoking poems by reflecting on their experiences, wishes, dreams and hopes
• to raise awareness amongst stakeholders, politicians, ordinary EU citizens, etc. on the fate of refugees in- and outside of Europe
• to demonstrate that #refugees are welcome and advocate for their rights
• to be creative

Make It Maldon Free Arts Festival

Make It Maldon is a one-off event in Maldon, Essex, England. It will run from Saturday 29th to Monday 31st August 2015 and is co-ordinated by the amazing Willow Shepstone, as her university placement project for Nottingham Trent University, where she studies product and furniture design.

I will be giving a free reading of my poetry on Saturday 29th August, at 3pm, and leading a free beginners’ poetry workshop on Sunday 30th, from 2-4pm. Both events will be at the beautiful Hayletts Gallery. The beginners poetry workshop is open to all. We’ll be using the fantastic art (in Hayletts Summer Mixed Exhibition) as our inspiration – and you really don’t have to have any experience to participate. I will be very kind and gentle.

Booking essential, by emailing me: rosiesandler@talktalk.net

Please can you share this, if you are UK-based and have friends/family in Essex? Thank you!

Free Verse: The Poetry Book Fair in London 2015

For those of you based in the South of England, the Poetry Book Fair in London looks well worth a visit. (There is a poetry competition this year, but it has a fee for entry.) Visit the Fair from 10am to 4.30pm at Conway Hall, 25 Red Lion Square, WC1R 4RL. Then go to the party from 4pm to ‘late’ at The Square Pig & Pen, 30-32 Procter Street, WC1V 6NX. The event promises free entry, free poems, readings, discussions and more than 70 publishers. Find the Fair on Twitter or Facebook.

William Soutar Writing Prize 2015

The William Soutar Writing Prize is run by Perth and Kinross libraries. Now in its fourteenth year, this annual competition alternates between poetry and short stories. The competition in 2015 is for poems. Entry to this Scottish-based competition is free, and open to anyone in the world over the age of 16yrs. Individuals are limited to two poems only. Entries may be in English or Scots. First prize is an Arvon Writing Course. Second Prize: £100 Book Token. Local Prize:£50 Book Token to be awarded for the best work from a resident of Perth and Kinross in Scotland. Deadline: 23 June 2015. More details and full rules here: http://www.pkc.gov.uk/CHttpHandler.ashx?id=29920&p=0 (I am having trouble with this link, which seems to change to a more generic council website link as I paste it in. The best thing seems to be to click on the link, and then, if the Prize doesn’t show up, do a search on the website.)

Poets with Disabilities

Poets who identify as disabled are invited to submit to an anthology of boundary-pushing work. The poems themselves do not need to be on the theme of disability. You must be a resident of Northern Ireland, Wales, Scotland or England. Closing date is 31 July 2015. For more information: https://britishdisabledpoetry.wordpress.com/submission-guidelines/

New feminist e-zine seeks submissions

‘No Falling Ribbons’ ezine is looking for work for its first issue. Deadline is 31 May 2015. Sorry for the short notice!
The following is copied from their website (http://nofallingribbons.tumblr.com/submissionguidelines):
‘we are currently seeking submissions for our first issue in the form of poetry, prose, articles, opinion pieces, illustration, photography, and music. we are particularly interested in work that falls loosely into the context of feminism – though this is not a neccessity. submissions are free and open to anyone and will be judged on the quality of work rather than the reputation of the writer/artist. because we are still establishing our aesthetic we are open to anything, we want you to surprise us!’

Poems on Wading Birds

Lovely new independent press, Dunlin Press, is looking for previously unpublished writings about UK wading birds. Deadline is 15 July 2015. More information on the website: http://dunlinpress.com/submissions/