Poetry Competitions Oct-Dec 2013

Troubadour International Poetry Prize 2013
Closing Date: 21/10/2013
Info: Up to 45 lines
Judges: Deryn Rees-Jones & George Szirtes.
Prizes: 1st £2,500, 2nd £500, 3rd £250, 20 prizes of £20 each - plus a spring 2014 coffee-house-poetry season-ticket, a prize-winners' coffee-house poetry reading with Deryn Rees-Jones & George Szirtes for prize-winning poets.
Entry Fee: £5/ 6 Euros/ $8 per poem
See full entry details at www.coffeehousepoetry.org/prizes/ 
By Post: Troubadour International Poetry Prize, Coffee-House Poetry, PO Box 16210, LONDON W4 1ZP.
By E-mail: CoffPoetry@aol.com

National Poetry Competition 2013
Closing Date: 31st October 2013
Prizes: First Prize: £5000, Second Prize: £2000, Third Prize: £1000, Seven Commendations: £100. The top-three winning poems will be published in Poetry Review. The winner is also invited to read at the Ledbury Poetry Festival in July 2014. Up to 150 entrants will also be offered a discount on selected activities from the Poetry School. Winning and commended poems will be published on the Poetry Society website when the competition prizes are announced in spring 2014.
Judges: The judges of the 2013 National Poetry Competition are Julia Copus, Matthew Sweeney and Jane Yeh.
The National Poetry Competition is an award for individual poems that are previously unpublished.
Entry Fee: £6 for first entry, £3.50 for subsequent entries
Postal Entries: National Poetry Competition, The Poetry Society,22 Betterton Street, London, WC2H 9BX, UK
Enter online: http://www.poetrysociety.org.uk/content/competitions/npc/

What's your Place?
Closing Date: 31st December 2013
Prize: £100 plus publication in our online magazine. Organised by Holland Park Press.
Theme: a poem about a neighbourhood that's important to you.
Entry Fee: £0
More information is available from http://www.hollandparkpress.co.uk/magazine_detail.php?magazine_id=255&language=English

To Sing Away the Darkest Days by Norbert Hirschhorn - new poetry collection available now!

Published by Holland Park Press
RRP £8.99
ISBN 978-1-907320-35-4 

To Sing Away the Darkest Days is the culmination of a five-year project which saw Norbert Hirschhorn source more than one thousand Yiddish songs.

Ruth Rubin, pioneer archivist of Yiddish folksong, wrote: ‘Yiddish folksongs are in a vernacular closest to the popular speech of the folk.’

For Norbert they helped him to rediscover and trace his own Jewish cultural history. However, some of the songs ‘spoke’ to him as a poet and begged for a new translation, or ‘re-imagining’ as he calls it, into English poems.

The resulting collection of poems tells the story of the emigrant, the Jew in the Diaspora. Norbert adds his unique view: he personalises the Diaspora, and at the same time brings a vanished culture back to life. The collection is funny and poignant and captures the Jewish experience, but the struggle and questioning of the poet add an extra dimension.

To Sing Away the Darkest Days is not only a wonderful collection of poems but also a necessary historical document.

The Quantum Rebbe

Nu, Einstein, with your ferret’s brain,
come sit at our Rebbe’s table and learn
a thing or two. So you made a rocket

to shoot at the stars? Which makes you
a wonder? Ha! Our Rebbe opens his
umbrella and he’s dancing on Mars.

You discovered relativity? Our Rebbe can fly
faster than light to greet the shabbos bride
from the previous night, returns looking younger.

Don’t beat the kettle about your Big Bang!
Who do you think was virtually there when G-d,
Master of the Universe, created time, heaven, earth!

And when the moshiyekh, the Anointed One,
comes to rebuild our Temple, our Rebbe will be
alongside – sanctifying, cantillating, praying.

© Norbert Hirschhorn 2013


About the Author
 

Norbert Hirschhorn is a physician specializing in international public health, commended in 1993 by President Bill Clinton as an ‘American Health Hero.’ He now lives in London and Beirut. His poems have been published in over three dozen journals, ten anthologies, four pamphlets, and three full collections: A Cracked River, Slow Dancer Press, London, 1999; Mourning in the Presence of a Corpse, Dar al-Jadeed, Beirut, 2008; Monastery of the Moon, Dar al-Jadeed, Beirut, 2012. His work has won a number of prizes in the US and UK. 



You can find out more about Norbet and his work at Holland Park Press' website.

Rosie Garland reading poems from her collection 'Everything Must Go' are now available

Holland Park Press are very excited to announce that six videos of Rosie Garland reading poems from her collection 'Everything Must Go' are now available.

Rosie Garland, author of 'The Palace of Curiosities', recites ‘Fortune teller’, ‘Moratorium’, ‘So Long’, ‘Good Behaviour’, ‘Donor's Card’ and ‘Dignity’, powerful poems describing her battle with throat cancer.
You can listen to the poems on this page http://hollandparkpress.co.uk/magazine_detail.php?magazine_id=245&language=English or through the Holland Park Press YouTube channel.
Listen and get carried along with Rosie’s story.

Here is our book review of 'Everything Must Go', from August 2012:

‘Everything Must Go’

By Rosie Garland Published by Holland Park Press
RRP £8.99 (paperback)
ISBN 9781907320224


Wow. ‘Everything Must Go’ is breath-taking in its laid-bare honesty. Rosie Garland’s poems tell of her battle with cancer from the moment she’s told until she receives the news its in remission. It’s not a pitiful or melodramatic narration, or even negative – Rosie expresses her experiences; her initial numbness and shock, her hair loss, her sickness, the wanting to disappear, the hospital, the pain and weakness, the treatment, the loss of her feminity – it’s heart-breaking but Rosie is so strong in her poems that’s it’s somewhat uplifting. My personal favourites from the collection are ‘Camouflage’ and ‘Dignity’. Quite stunning and bought a tear to my eye.

Highly recommended

‘Everything Must Go’ By Rosie Garland - new poetry collection

‘Everything Must Go’
By Rosie Garland
Published by Holland Park Press
RRP £8.99 (paperback)
ISBN 9781907320224
Reviewed by Lynsey Evans

Wow. ‘Everything Must Go’ is breath-taking in its laid-bare honesty. Rosie Garland’s poems tell of her battle with cancer from the moment she’s told until she receives the news its in remission. It’s not a pitiful or melodramatic narration, or even negative – Rosie expresses her experiences; her initial numbness and shock, her hair loss, her sickness, the wanting to disappear, the hospital, the pain and weakness, the treatment, the loss of her feminity – it’s heart-breaking but Rosie is so strong in her poems that’s it’s somewhat uplifting. My personal favourites from the collection are ‘Camouflage’ and ‘Dignity’. Quite stunning and bought a tear to my eye.

Highly recommended.

Visit Publisher's Website

Rosie Garland 2012 Mslexia Novel Competition Winner releases new poetry collection

Being told you have cancer is a life-changing event. Rosie Garland, writer and performer, didn’t need any tissues when she was told, but later used poetry to come to terms with the disease, treatment and slow recovery.

Her account is not at all melodramatic or tearful, but paints vivid pictures, and her poems have a dynamic and rhythmic uplifting beat, especially when things get tough. Most importantly, she shows how any disease – and cancer especially – attacks your humanity and more specifically your femininity.

Rosie Garland, based in Manchester, is a poet, writer and performance artist. She published four solo poetry collections and her award-winning short stories, poems and essays have been widely anthologised. In March 2012 she won the inaugural Mslexia Novel Competition with her first novel, The Palace of Curiosities and within weeks landed a six-figure book deal with HarperCollins.

Rosie’s new poetry collection Everything Must Go, ISBN 978-1-907320-22-4, 51 pages, is being published by Holland Park Press: http://hollandparkpress.co.uk/book_detail.php?book_id=33.