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St Davids Day Means Poetry Day!

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The international Welsh Poetry Competition, 2012, was launched this week in Pontypridd, South Wales.

The annual competition, now in its sixth year, has become an important event on the literary calendar.

Writer and competition organizer Dave Lewis said: The competition has been a huge success and it has become more and more popular each year. We are especially pleased that it has now become a truly international event with entries arriving from around the world.

Many feel the competition is unique because it is truly independent and we do not use filter judges. All our entries are also judged anonymously and so, whether you are an established writer or beginner, everyone has an equal chance. This is important because it allows new talent to be discovered.

This year the competition will be judged by Welsh writer and environmentalist, John Evans .

We are absolutely delighted that John Evans , has agreed to judge this years competition. He has become an internationally respected figure both for his writing and his work campaigning to conserve our wildlife and environment.

The competition has had five great years already and last year we celebrated with an anthology containing all the winning poems from the competition so if anyone also wants to see the standard of work before they enter they can buy a copy from the competition website.

As always, we hope to discover previously unpublished voices alongside the more familiar literary names. We believe good poetry should be raw, passionate, and honest we are less interested in dry, academic, poetry. This is the kind of writing wed like to see bursting onto the creative writing scene in Wales.

The prize money for 2012 is as follows. Prizes are: 1st Prize - 300, 2nd Prize - 150 and 3rd Prize - 75 .

To enter you just need to compose a poem, in English, of less than 50 lines and send to the competition organizers. Entry forms are available by post, can be downloaded from the web site or picked up from c libraries. It is just 4 to enter and the closing date is Sunday 27 ^th May 2012 .

Competition Website - www.welshpoetry.co.uk

Competition Judge www.johnevans.org.uk