Poetry Foundation Perdu and Flemish-Dutch House deBuren are once again looking for poets who have not yet published a collection. Are you the poet we are looking for?
Vers van het Mes has been organised since 2003 and is dedicated to up-and-coming poetry talent. During three stage events in the Netherlands and Flanders, the selected poets get the chance to present their work to an audience through readings and a 'poëtica' in which they get to speak out about their work, the poetry landscape and their role in it.
We ask for a first draft of the 'poëtica' by mid-February 2024. On 5 April 2024, we will organise a performance workshop for the selected poets in Amsterdam and the first performance in the evening. Two performances in Belgium will follow in the weekend of 13 and 14 April. Please keep these dates free if you decide to apply.
Want to participate?
For this 38th edition, we are sending out an open call for poets to submit a critical selection of a number (minimum 5 and maximum 10) of poems to vvhm@perdu.nl by 20 November 2023. Submissions will be assessed by the editorial teams of Perdu and deBuren.
The submission consists of
- A short motivation (maximum 200 words),
- A brief positioning of your work in the poetry landscape (maximum 200 words),
- A critical selection of a number of poems (minimum 5, maximum 10),
- If you wish, you can also include an audio version of one of your poems.
Please keep these guidelines in mind:
- We anonymise submissions. Do not mention your name anywhere in your application. Do mention your telephone number and current place of residence in your accompanying e-mail,
- Submit your application as 1 PDF file; give the first 5 words of your first poem as file name,
- Audio files should be submitted as an mp3 file via WeTransfer. Give the file the same name as your PDF file (even if it is not the recorded text),
- Give your e-mail the subject line Submission Vers van het Mes.
Conditions for participation
- You are at least 18 years old,
- Your submission has not been published before. You have not yet published your own collection; magazine publications or (DIY) chapbooks or zines are allowed,
- Your entry is your own work,
- Your entry has been submitted before 20 November 2023 You will receive a confirmation of receipt within 3 working days. By the end of December at the latest, we will announce whether you are part of the selection for Vers van het Mes 2024. Furthermore, we cannot correspond about the result.
Vers van het Mes is a collaboration between deBuren and Perdu.
