Literature and Verbal Arts (LaVA) at Community Arts Partnership is delighted to open the submissions process for the 2021-2022 Poetry in Motion project.

This year we are excited to announce that with the support of the Arts Council of Northern Ireland and of the Heaney family, we will be presenting the eighth Seamus Heaney Award for New Writing to the most outstanding submission through this process.

Each year, Community Arts Partnership publishes an anthology of new writing from poets across Northern Ireland. This will also be our twenty second anthology, and we are opening submissions today, 31st August, 2021 and closing at 9.00am on Monday the 29 November.

Anyone living in Northern Ireland is eligible to make a submission for the anthology by following the GUIDELINES BELOW.

Please note: previous winners of the Seamus Heaney Award for New Writing are not eligible to submit their poems or to enter for the award.

Look out for an announcement about Poetry Masterclasses for anyone who intends to submit, and would like to work on their drafts. These masterclasses will take place in November.

We extend our sincere thanks to the Heaney family for the continued opportunity to offer the awards, in particular Marie Heaney for her warm support and commendation of our LaVA programmes.

Furthermore, we congratulate and applaud our principal funder, the Arts Council of Northern Ireland, for the continuing funding support for this award process. As their Head of Literature, Damian Smyth, was quick to point out, ‘The Seamus Heaney Awards, as offered by CAP, are the only awards in the world to carry his name.’ We in CAP are humbled and committed to honouring the trust placed in us and the legacy of our foremost recognised poet, in offering these awards.

Once the selection has been made for the anthology, the selected poems will be presented to a panel which will include representatives from ACNI, the Heaney family, Community Arts Partnership and other members of the local literary community from across the region. The panel will then make the decision as to whom to award this accolade. This represents an exciting opportunity to all new and emerging poets living here, to be recognised for their craft, and can be a springboard to the next stage on their literary career.

The theme of this year’s callout is “Threshold”. This theme, set against the uncertainty and fragility of our times, the tipping point or perhaps reflecting our kith and kin in a moment of transition.

You can read about last year’s award, in the words of the winner, Jim McElroy.

SUBMISSION RULES

The title of the printed anthology will be ‘Threshold’. You are invited to reflect on our theme in your poem, but please avoid the title Threshold for your poem.

All Submissions must be made electronically, marking the subject line of your email ‘Poetry in Motion Submission.’

Submissions must be made either:

1. Typed in Word-compatible documents and emailed to submissions@capartscentre.com meeting the exact format below or
   1. Download and Save our Submission Template pdf (below) to your computer, paste or type in your poem, save and rename the pdf to the TITLE of your poem and then email to: submissions@capartscentre.com
      Download Submission Template (pdf)
   2. Formatting:
      Poems must be no more than 35 lines long (including line/stanza breaks) and no more than75 characters per line (a character can be a letter, number, space or any keystroke).
   3. If you paste your poem into the official Submission Template (pdf), you will be unable to fit in lines which contain more than 75 characters, so please adjust your lines accordingly so that your poem is not disqualified. Please double check your formatting so that you are content. We can only accept the formatting you provide in our template.
2. If you are submitting more than one poem (you may submit up to 3), you should attach each poem in a separate document. Each attachment should be saved as the poem title e.g. ‘The River.pdf’. Please do not use the title ‘CAP submission, or ‘Submission’ – we can only accept documents which are the title of your poem. If your name appears on the poem or in the name of the document, it will be disqualified.
3. Poems previously published must not be submitted. Work that has appeared online for any reason is considered to have been previously published and should not be submitted.
4. Previous winners of the Seamus Heaney Award for New Writing will not be considered for awards but can still submit to the anthology.
5. Late submissions will not be accepted under any circumstances
6. In the body of the email, you must provide your name, address with postcode, phone number, email address, a list of the titles of your attached poems and include the statement:
   1. Please find my poems attached
      Name: Jane Brown
      Email: jane@email.com
      Address (in one line only): 251 Haiku Gardens Ballytown BT20 20XX
      Phone number: 0777777777
      ‘I hereby verify that my poems are my own original work and has/have not been published elsewhere’
7. PLEASE NOTE that if you do not include this information in your email, in the form indicated above, your poem will be disqualified.
8. No more than three submissions per person are permitted. If you submit more than three, nonewill proceed to the selection process.
9. If your submission does not address all of the criteria/formatting listed above correctly, CAP reserves the right to automatically disqualify your submission.
10. Do not make simultaneous submissions to other potential publishers i.e. work that has been submitted or is being considered elsewhere, should not be submitted.
11. You must live in Northern Ireland (we will verify your address should your poetry be selected)
12. By making a submission, you grant permission for Community Arts Partnership to publish the poems submitted in the forthcoming anthology and retain publishing copyright. All individual copyright rests with the poet.
13. By making a submission to the anthology, you also automatically grant permission for your work to be considered for the Seamus Heaney Award for New Writing, if selected for the anthology (hence our wish to have poems submitted without names etc to assist the integrity of that selection process) and not a previous outright winner.
14. Please keep a copy of your poems as we are unable to return them or to enter into any correspondence regarding your work subsequent to submission.
15. Copyright remains with the poet; however, if your work is published by Community Arts Partnership you must credit us in any future anthologies or collections in which your work appears stating that the piece was first published by Community Arts Partnership and giving the name of the publication and the year in which it was published.
16. Community Arts Partnership reserves the right to make reasonable minor adjustments and/or suggestions prior to publication such as typos or formatting irregularities. In some limited editorial cases, poets may be contacted to ascertain adjustments.
17. If you have any queries about Poetry in Motion Community, The Seamus Heaney Award for New Writing or the submission process itself, please contact the Literature and Verbal Arts (LaVA) coordinator Shelley Tracey: shelleyt@capartscentre.com OR steven@capartscentre.com (for the submission process).