Petersham Festival

Please note that we have extended the date for last entries to 31 March 2009 - so there is still time to submit your entry....

Petersham Festival Poetry Competition 2009

Childhood and Music

The suggested themes for this year’s poetry competition are to commemorate the 250 th Anniversary of Handel’s death on the Tuesday of the 2009 Petersham Festival (April 14 th) and the Foundling Hospital that Handel raised so much money for with Messiah Performances.

To commemorate this event the 2009 Petersham Festival will raise money for the same charity that Handel supported, as it still cares for the most vulnerable children in London through adoption, education, music therapy, parenting classes, family support, housing etc, and is now called Coram.

For inspiration you may like to visit The Foundling Museum at 40 Brunswick Square, London WC1N 1AZ, telephone: 020 7841 3600 or read about Coram on www.coram.org.uk, or write about something from your own, someone else’s, or an imagined childhood, and/or about some aspect of music, or a musical experience or a piece of music or composer. Please see the entry rules below.

Entry Rules

Entries to be submitted by Tuesday 31st March 2009 to: PFPC, 36 St Alban’s Rd, Kingston upon Thames, Surrey. KT2 5HQ

Please send them unfolded (for ease of printing) with one copy clearly marked with your name & address & email address if you have one & age if under 19. Plus, one copy, without any identification visible for the judges.

If you wish to have any illustrations included in a subsequent publication please include a third illustrated copy.

Please include an administration fee of £5 or £2.50 for under 19’s for each entry or £10/£5 (under 19’s) for a maximum of 3 poems.

We will have a poetry reading of a selection of the entries during the Festival and produce a booklet of them.