[06
OCT 98] ARTS, ENTERTAINMENT & THE MEDIA NEWS
Coventry Poetry Prize LaunchedToday saw the
launch of the Coventry Poetry Prize.
With a top prize of £2,000 Coventry writer Lyn
Waites hopes this national competition will "put Coventry on the poetry map".
After coming up with the idea Lyn with her
husband and friends been sending out thousands of leaflets and posters to every library,
college and university across the country to promote the competition.
Entries will be judges after the closing
date on 1 April next year and the best entries will be selected to make up a millennium
anthology of "poetry from the people".
As well as the first prize the second prize
of £500 and the third prize of £200 will make this amongst the top national poetry
competitions. The prize money is largely coming from the money earnt by Lyn for her play
'Going Home' that was broadcast on BBC Radio 4.
Keresley based Lyn hopes this competition
will be the start of something bigger:
"We're looking at the idea of a
week-long Coventry Poetry Festival - maybe linked in with Arts Alive. If all goes well it
could start in the summer of the year 2000.
"I hope this competition will help to
get people over the idea that poetry is 'posh' - and to show that poetry is for
everyone."
Poems for the competition must be in
English and no more than 50 lines long. They must not have been entered for any other
competition nor published elsewhere.
Entries must be typed on one side of A4
paper and free of identification - the name, address and title of the poem should be on a
separate sheet of paper. There is an entry fee of £3.00 per poem and cheques should have
the sender's name and address on the reverse.
Entries should be sent before the closing
date of 1 April 1999 to:
Equal Writes
PO Box 2001
Coventry
CV6 2YN
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