SONNET JUDGE ANNOUNCED

Poet and biographer Harry Ricketts is to judge the Wellington Sonnet Competition 2008.
“Any fourteen-line of poem about Wellington will qualify,” he says, “because the sonnet is a still evolving form that I find fascinating. Poems submitted to the competition need not have a traditional rhyming scheme, although formal sonnets will also be welcome.”

The New Zealand Society of Authors is running the competition, sponsored by New Zealand Post, in aid of the Wellington Writers Walk. For a $10 entry fee, (plus $5 for each additional poem submitted), people will be in to win a $1000 first prize, $500 second prize, $250 third prize or one of the ten highly commended prizes of $50. The closing date is 22 September 2008 and entrants can download forms and conditions from http://www.authors.org.nz/

Harry Ricketts is an Associate Professor in the School of English, Film and Theatre and Media Studies at Victoria University of Wellington. Born in London and educated at Oxford University, he has lived in England, Malaysia, Hong Kong and New Zealand.
He is the author of eight collections of poems and the internationally acclaimed biography of Rudyard Kipling, The Unforgiving Minute published in England by Chatto and Windus in 1999 and in the U.S.A in 2000.
He has published various essays and critical writings and edited collections of work by other poets. He is currently working on a composite biography of a dozen World War One poets and is co-editor of the quarterly review journal New Zealand Books.



For further information contact:

Rosemary Wildblood
Chair, Wellington Writers Walk
Telephone (04) 2368 006
(021 076 3810
Email rosemarywildblood@paradise.net.nz