By Holland Park Press

This year our competition celebrates the launch of a remarkable short story collection Where is my Mask of an Honest Man? by Laura Del-Rivo. Her stories are set in and around Portobello Market in Notting Hill London. You feel that the unique character of this area permeates the characters and events in the stories. Therefore the theme of our poetry competition is: What’s your Place?

We’re delighted that Norbert Hirschhorn and Donald Gardner have agreed to join our judging team.

This competition invites poems in English or Dutch, so Dutch poets please read the Dutch instructions.

The Task

We invite you to write a poem about a neighbourhood that’s important to you. It could be the place you grew up in, the area you live in now, or a neighbourhood which influenced your life in a particular way. It could well be a place you visited on holiday, or city that made a big impression on you, or equally well a place that has blighted your life ever since. It could be a house, a café, school or a park, a neighbourhood, a motorway, railway station, any place that defines the neighbourhood.

We like to read about your sense of place expressed in a poem.

It’s about your take on the place but at the same time we’re looking for an individual vision that has a universal resonance; in other words, a poem which uses the literary form to say something more, and which is not just about yourself.

We want to be moved by your poem, exciting by its images, we love to see wonderful use of language and striking metaphors. Above all the poem about the place that defines you should be written from the heart and you should feel it had to be put on paper.

Just to get you started here are a few examples:

From Composed upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802 by William Wordsworth

Earth hath not anything to show more fair:
Dull would he be of soul who could pass by
A sight so touching in its majesty:
This City now doth, like a garment, wear
The beauty of the morning; silent, bare,

From The Waste Land by T.S. Eliot:

Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee
With a shower of rain; we stopped in the colonnade, 
And went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten, 
And drank coffee, and talked for an hour. 
Bin gar keine Russin, stamm’ aus Litauen, echt deutsch.

From The Whitsun Weddings by Philip Larkin:

At first, I didn’t notice what a noise
The weddings made
Each station that we stopped at: sun destroys
The interest of what’s happening in the shade,
And down the long cool platforms whoops and skirls
I took for porters larking with the mails,
And went on reading.

From Under Milk Wood by Dylan Thomas:

To begin at the beginning:

It is spring, moonless night in the small town, starless
and bible-black, the cobblestreets silent and the hunched,
courters’-and-rabbits’ wood limping invisible down to the
sloeblack, slow, black, crowblack, fishingboatbobbing sea.

What is the prize?

The author of the winning poem will receive £100 plus the winning poem will be published in our online magazine.

Because we invite entries in Dutch and English, two poems will be awarded the first prize, one in English and one Dutch poem. For the benefit of our English readers the winning Dutch poem will be translated into English and published in both languages in our magazine.

Who can take part?

Anyone who submits an entry that complies with these guidelines:

• The poem has to be written in English or Dutch
• The poem should be 50 lines or less
• The poem must be the original work of the entrant and must not have been previously awarded or published
• You can only send in one poem per entrant
• We accepts poems by writers from any country as long as the poem is written in English or Dutch
• Entrants should be at least eighteen years of age

When is the closing date?

You can send in your entries from 1 June 2013 and the competition closes on 31 December 2013.

How to submit your entry

In order to enter the competition you have to email us: submissions[at]hollandparkpress.co.uk. We regret that we cannot process entries that do not follow the guidelines set out below, so please read these instructions carefully.

• The poem must be attached as a single Microsoft Word file
• You need to use Word 97-2003 file type (.doc extension not .docx)
• The font should be 12-point, Times New Roman, single line spacing
• The Word file has to be named as follows: ddmmyy_firstnamesurname_WP.doc, where ddmmyy is the date on which you send the email, firstname and surname are your names.
• Ddmmyy firstnamesurname WP must appear in the subject line of the email
• The body of the email should contain your contact details
• Please do not put your details in the Word file containing the poem

Announcement of the Winner

The shortlist will be published on our website on 30 January 2014 and the winner and runners-up will be announced during an event in central London on 23 February.

Previous English winning poet

The Judges

Norbert Hirschhorn

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 four 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, and To Sing Away the Darkest Days – Poems Re-imagined from Yiddish Folksongs, Holland Park Press, 2013. His work has won a number of prizes in the US and UK. 

Donald Gardner

Donald Gardner, born in London in 1938, is a poet and freelance Dutch translator. He has lived in Holland since 1979 and is the translator of the eminent Dutch poet and author Remco Campert. (I Dreamed in the Cities at Night, Arc Publications, 2007) He was originally a translator of Latin American literature and his published work includes an acclaimed translation of Octavio Paz’s long poem The Sun Stone (Cosmos, 1968). Donald Gardner’s own poems have been widely published and his most recent collections include How to Get the Most out of your Jet Lag (Ye Olde Font Shoppe, New Haven, 2000) and The Glittering Sea (Hearing Eye Press, 2006). He is also well known for his performances of his poetry in Amsterdam, London and New York.

Arnold Jansen op de Haar

Arnold is the publishing advisor for Dutch literature for Holland Park Press and the author of several novels De koning van Tuzla (King of Tuzla), Engel (Angel) and a poetry collection Joegoslavisch requiem (Yugoslav Requiem) as well as other books, numerous columns and articles. His new poetry collection will be published in 2014.

Bernadette Jansen op de Haar

Bernadette is the publisher and founder of Holland Park Press. She is delighted to organise this competition and is looking forward to reading your poems.