World Poets Welcome Int’l Poetry Competition on Imam Hussein (AS)

Less than two weeks after call for the international competition held by the Islamic Center for Africa in Johannesburg, tens of poets from Iran, Australia, Sweden, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Pakistan and India have sent their artworks to the secretariat.

The ICFA has launched an international poetry award to honor two winners who compose the best poems in Persian and English on Imam Hossein and his uprising.

Each work will receive the International Grand Poetry Award worth €10,000, ICFA Director Seyed Abdollah Hosseini announced earlier this month.

“Due to the fact that the award will also be for poetry in the English language, the headquarters of the award is located in South Africa,” he said.

Each winner will also receive the trophy of the Poet of the Year, and the centers will cover all the cost of their travel to Karbala, which hosts the holy shrines Imam Hossein (AS) and his brother, Hazrat Abbas (AS).

The two winners will work as the Ahl al-Bayt ambassadors during the year.

A jury of top experts on Persian and English literature also will pick ten other top works, which will receive honorable mentions and their composers will also pay visits to the Muslims’ holy shrines at the organizers’ expense.

The jury will select the winners from a long list of 100 entries chosen from among the submissions. The 100 poems are scheduled to be published in a book. In addition the winning works will be published in several languages. 

Only those compositions that have not been published audio-visually are allowed to compete in this contest, and the deadlines for Persian and English categories are October 8 and 20 respectively.