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More that 7000 apply for Prince of Poet competition held in Abu Dhabi

The Prince of Poets competition has attracted over 7000 applicants from around the Arab World, out of that only 35 were selected by a jury for their poetic talents, and through voting only the top five winners will be receiving prize money.

  • By Dina El Shammaa, Staff Reporter
  • Published: 16:07 June 11, 2008
  • Gulf News

Abu Dhabi: The Prince of Poets competition has attracted over 7000 applicants from around the Arab World, out of that only 35 were selected by a jury for their poetic talents, and through voting only the top five winners will be receiving prize money.

First prize will be Dh1,000,000; second prize Dh500,000; third prize Dh30,000; fourth prize Dh200,000 and fifth prize Dh100,000.

The Prince of Poets is a cultural competition of classical Arabic poetry of different kinds, whether rhymed columnar poems or those which break the traditional chain to appear in a new shape under many names such as the free poem and what is commonly known as the measure poem.

A panel of judges auditioned over 300 shortlisted poets selected from the 7000 applications. The five judges whittled down the 300 poets to 35. The audition phase was documented in three episodes and televised from June 5.

"Through the "Prince of Poets" contest we succeeded in achieving a number of elevated cultural goals, including encouraging new generations to develop their poetic talents, enabling them to meet with distinct poets, and teaching them to identify the rhythms and rhymes of various schools of poetry," said Mohammed Khalaf Al Mazrouei, Director General of Abu Dhabi Authority for Culture and Heritage, at the press conference on Wednesday.

At every stage of the competition, successful contestants are chosen through votes from various judges, live audience in Al Raha Beach Theatre (ARBT), Abu Dhabi and through SMS text messages from television viewers. Judges votes count for 50 per cent and SMS voting from the audience counts for the remaining 50 per cent.

Each episode will be aired live from ARBT and broadcasted in the Abu Dhabi television and the Poetry Channel over the course of one week, every Thursday morning.

According to Khalaf, a number of publishers and foreign literary magazines have also showed interest in translating the poems into English to promote and introduce Arabic Poetry to various countries around the world.

"We are in need to recall our traditions from a different prospective, this is one of the objectives of the Prince of Poets project from which we will discover skills that revive the enthusiasm in us to write creatively. I think that the Prince of Poets show will create a new state of aestheticism that will have a leading role in the cultural area," said Dr Ali Bin Tamim, one of the judges in the competition.

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