This contest is closed, and the results were declared at the David Sassoon Library Garden on the 10th February, 2007. You can view the winning entries here, and the complete scoresheets here.

SMS Poetry has one simple guideline: The entire poem must be short enough to fit into a single 160-character SMS.

This contest is now in its third year at the Kala Ghoda Arts Festival. The 2005 winners are here, and the 2006 semi-finalists are here, (scoresheet here).

Theme

Memory

Submissions

[Entries to this contest are now closed. We hope to see you next year.]

Important note on submissions (added on 29th January, 2007): Please do not put any personally identifying information in the body of your entry. By this we mean no byline, signature, credit line, copyright notice or symbol. If you have filled out the fields for name, email address and phone number, never fear, your entry is linked to that data by the system. The body of your entry is all our jury will see, and all that they want to see. Entries that ignore this will be seen to be trying to influence the jury, and will be disqualified.

Deadline

Midnight (Indian Standard Time), 4th February, 2007.

Rules and Conditions

The contest is open to anyone, anywhere, with the exception of the jury.

Entries must fit into a standard single SMS (i.e., not more than 160 characters, including punctuation marks and spaces).

Entries must be in English, but “SMSese” is okay; in fact, it is encouraged. But B cre8iv. Drppng th vwls is shr lznss & cn mk yr pm incmprhnsbl.

There is no restriction on poetic form. (If you can fit a sonnet into 160 characters, more power to you!)

Entries must be your own, original work, and previously unpublished anywhere, in print or online. (We interpret “published” to mean that there was some form of editorial or jury selection and/or payment involved. So work that appeared on a personal blog or unmoderated forum is okay, but something that won you a prize somewhere is not. Something that may have been selected to be printed in a newspaper is published, whether you got paid for it or not.)

Multiple entries are permitted.

There is no entry fee.

Poems submitted remain the intellectual property of the poets, but by submitting an entry, you give the Kala Ghoda Association and the Kala Ghoda Arts Festival and its Sponsors permission to use your entry, with no payment to you, in the Festival Blog, and as part of Press Releases (from where they may be reproduced by media organisations) and in a possible special edition compilation booklet featuring the best of the Festival.

The decisions of the jury are final and binding, and no correspondence will be entertained regarding the jury’s decisions.

Jury

Caferati’s editors will screen the initial entries to keep the long list to a reasonable number. In the second round of judging, they will be joined by:

Jane Bhandari, painter and poet, has lived in India for four decades . She is the author of two collections of poetry: Single Bed and Aquarius. She has also written two children’s books, The Round Square Chapatti and The Long Thin Jungle. A third collection of poems and a novel are in progress.

Marilyn Noronha, born Bayros, lives in Mumbai. Teaching was her first love and she has returned to it, teaching Music and Creative Writing, after working for twenty-three years in a nationalised bank. A long standing Committee member of the Poetry Circle of Mumbai, Marilyn has read her poetry at several forums. Her work has been published in anthologies as well as national and international journals. Besides poems, Marilyn also writes short stories and plays for children. Several short stories have been published in magazines. Some of her plays have been performed on stage, radio and television. Her first collection of poems, Different Faces, was published by Allied Publishers Private Limited, Mumbai, India. Her writing has been included in Confronting Love, an anthology of love poems, published by Penguin Books, India. A few poems have also been selected by Sahitya Academy for their anthology of women’s poetry, to be published in the near future.

Jerry Pinto writes poetry, makes anthologies, and is working on a novel.

Prizes

Prizes worth approximately Rs 3000, Rs 2000, and Rs 1000 to be won, sponsored by [to be announced].

Winners will be announced on the evening of 10th February, 2007, at David Sasson Library Garden.

Winning entries will be featured on the Festival Blog.

Updates

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