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 fourth year at the Kala Ghoda Arts Festival.

Theme

An Anti-Valentine

How to enter

Go to the entry form. (But puhleeze make sure you read the entire page here first.)

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), 3rd February, 2008

Rules and Conditions

The contest is open to anyone, anywhere, with the exception of the jury and their immediate family members.
Note, however, that you must have a bank account and mailing address in India, or, if you win, be able to nominate someone in India to receive your prize.

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. Dnt jst drp th vwls; thts shr lznss & cn mk yr pm wll ngh 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Entries must be your own, original work, and previously unpublished anywhere, in print or online.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. Do not duplicate entries, however. We will delete all copies of your entry from the system if you flood it.

There is no entry fee.

Submissions remain the intellectual property of the entrants, but by submitting an entry, you give the the Kala Ghoda Association, the Kala Ghoda Arts Festival and its Sponsors, and Caferati permission to use your entry, with acknowledgement, but with no payment to you, in their websites, as part of Press Releases (where they may be reproduced by media organisations), and in a possible special booklet or CD 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:

Anjum Hasan has published one novel – Lunatic in my Head (Penguin-Zubaan) and a collection of poems – Street on the Hill (Sahitya Akademi). She is Communications Editor at India Foundation for the Arts, Bangalore .

Vivek Narayanan’s first book was Universal Beach (Harbour Line, 2006). He has been publishing his poetry since 1994, and has been performing it since 1995. His poems, stories and essays have appeared in a number of journals, including the Boston-based international poetry annual, Fulcrum (where he is also an Associate Editor), Harvard Review, Agni and Open Space India, and in anthologies like Reasons For Belonging: Fourteen Contemporary Indian Poets (Viking Penguin, 2002) and the forthcoming Language for a New Century: Contemporary Poetry from the Middle East, Asia, & Beyond (W.W. Norton, 2008). He is currently based in Delhi, where he works at Sarai-CSDS and is Consulting Editor for a new online literary journal, Almost Island, edited by Sharmistha Mohanty.

C P Surendran is the author four volumes of poetry. In order of publication, these are, Gemini II (Penguin Viking), Posthumous Poems (Penguin Viking), Canaries on the Moon (Yeti) and Portraits of the Space We Occupy (Harper Collins). His debut novel, An Iron Harvest (Roli/IndiaInk), was published in 2006. He is a journalist by profession, and is currently based in Pune.

Sridala Swami’s poetry has appeared in Nthposition, Kritya, Museindia, Chandrabhaga, The Little Magazine, New Quest and Wasafiri; and in the Talking Poetry anthology 50 Poets 50 Poems edited by Priya Sarukkai Chhabria. Three books for very young children, Phani’s Funny Chappals, What Shall We Do For A Cradle? and Kabadiwala have been published by Pratham. Her first collection of poems, A Reluctant Survivor, was published by The Sahitya Akademi in June 2007. Swami lives in Hyderabad and writes poetry and fiction.

Prizes

Prizes worth approximately Rs 3000, Rs 2000, and Rs 1000 to be won.

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

Updates

All updates via the Caferati Contests newsgroup. Please make sure you’re subscribed.