Emirates Airline Festival of Literature has unveiled a brand new competition for the 2014 Festival targetted specifically for Spoken word poetry! This competition is called Qaseeda

Qaseeda is a performance-based poetry competition open to students between 14 and 18 years old who will compete in two categories:

1. Modern Classic
2. pre-1940 poetry.

The contestants can choose to perform in three languages – English, Arabic and the contestant’s Mother Tongue.

Past and present poets of the Festival will contribute their poems to an anthology that will be used by contestants when choosing a Modern Classic to perform. Unlike in recitation competitions, Qaseeda will require more in-depth understanding of the source material.

Qaseeda will be the fourth children’s competition in the Festival, after the Oxford University Press Short Story Writing Competition and the Taaleem Poetry Award, for which submissions began in late May, and the Chevron Readers’ Cup, which will be launched on 1st September.

More details of the Qaseeda competition will be announced soon. We will be posting them as soon as we know about them.

Find more information about the festival at the official website here