The ever popular annual Melbourne Poets International Poetry competition is now open.

This year in addition to the Open Section, we have two awards in the Under 18s category: one for is for Haiku and the other a Celebrating Diversity Award which calls on young poets to write about their experience of diversity; what they have experienced about other cultures and different groups in their community. Each award has a prize of $100.

David McCooey  is this year’s Open Section judge and Lorin Ford the judge of the Under 18s.

Entry fees remain the same for this year but we plan to review this in 2009.

Remember if you go in a competition you are a winner by taking such a risk.

We wish you every success.

And should you wish to view last year’s winning poems and the judges report click on News and follow the prompt to archives.

Entry Forms: Open section, Under 18s Haiku & Diversity section (same form).

ABOUT THE JUDGES

David McCooey

David is a poet, critic and academic. He is the author of two prize-winning books, including a collection of poems, Blister Pack, which won the Mary Gilmore Award in 2006 and was short-listed for four other major awards (including the Age Book of the Year Award and the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards). He is the author of numerous poems, reviews and essays that have appeared in national and international books, journals, and newspapers. He is the author of the ‘Contemporary Poetry’ chapter in the recent Companion to Twentieth Century Australian Literature. David is the deputy general editor of the forthcoming Macquarie PEN Anthology of Australian Literature. He is a senior lecturer in literary studies at Deakin University in Geelong.

Lorin Ford

Lorin Ford is an award-winning Melbourne poet whose haiku have been widely published nationally and internationally. She is a qualified English and ESL teacher. Some of her haiku may be found online in current issues and archives of The Heron’s Nest, Shamrock Haiku Journal, Stylus, the paper wasp website and in the anthology, haiku dreaming australia. Her first haiku book, a wattle seedpod (Post Pressed, publishers), will be launched in July.