This is a fabulous and prestigious poetry competition with prizes for free verse, formal verse and short verse, culminating in a festival on Orta San Julio on Lake Orta in northern Italy in October. One of the judges is our own James Harpur.
It has however gone very expensive. €10 per poem. There is a rather convoluted facility to pay online but there is an extra charge of €10 for online entry, which is patently ridiculous.
Also there is a large discrepancy between Sterling and Euro - £25 for 4 poems or €40!! What's that all about? Sterling cheques accepted but Euro should be sent in notes and wrapped in silver paper.
I'd love to enter this but not at those prices.
Closing date 15th May.
Some Poets Union should outlaw these abominal price-gauging entry fees. What a bite! Talent should be recognized without the upfront fee. In Canada it is an automatic "buyer beware". Although, I suppose...could not the art council(s) somewhere waive these damn fees? From some Dead Poets' Society bursuaries?
ReplyDelete1-You have a point: 10 euro a poem is expensive. Reason: to get only the best poems!Some comps work on numbers of entries, we prefer to read (carefully and reread several times)poems entrants really feel are worth sending. So we avoid getting thousands of entries, a lot of which may not be great stuff. We'd probably make lots of money lowering entry fees and getting flooded with poems to which we could not give proper attention. 2-Euro cheques: bank charges are more than entry fee,hence notes!3-A competition costs to run:judges, print, ads, prizes....(Arts Council won't fund us 'not a wide British public')4- 2011 comp coming up,should you still be interested! Soon on website
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