Submissions are invited for Spirit of Home, the 5th in an annual series of popular Manly Art Gallery & Museum live poetry readings.

Twenty poems will be chosen by event curator Michele Seminara for live reading by the authors, who will each receive $50. Three of the poems will be selected for publication in online creative arts journal Verity La and receive an additional $50 payment. All twenty poems will be eligible for publication on the Australian Poetry Collaboration website.

This year, we are seeking poems that resonate with an exhibition curated by Manly Art Gallery & Museum staff, entitled Home Affairs.

The exhibition will run from 25 Oct - 1 Dec and will feature the work of 38 artists taking inspiration from the theme ‘Home affairs’. It will include works of photomedia, painting, drawing, printmaking, installation, sculpture, wood and ceramics, and explore the concept of home as an idea, a place, a possibility, a refuge, a memory, a contested space, a place to escape to or from…the permutations are endless.

To compliment the exhibition, we seek poems that similarly explore the geographic, cultural, political or emotional concept of ‘home’, poems that delve into old meanings or creates new ones — think home, homeland, home-grown, home-baked, homeless, un-homed, homebound, home-owner, home-made, homely, homing, homewards…

We ask that submissions be emailed to editor@verityla.com by 5pm Mon 30 Sept 2019. Entrants will be advised by Friday 18 October.

Contact Michele at editor@verityla.com for more information about the Poetry Alive competition and reading.

Spirit of Home Event

Selected poets will be required to perform their works at Manly Art Gallery & Museum on Sunday 10 Nov 2019, 2 - 4pm.

There will be an open mic section at the event for those whose work wasn’t selected but who still wish to read, or for any aspiring poet who’d like to come along and share their ‘home’ poems. Find out more