Next Friday is the deadline for the accepting submissions to the third edition of the “College Poet” Competition, organized by the Qatar Center for Poetry (Diwan Al-Arab).

Submissions are to be uploaded to the center’s website. All submissions must have their authors’ full names as in their national identity cards. Submitted poems must be 10-15 lines long. The competition is open to Qatari and resident college students currently enrolled in civilian or military colleges and universities. There are two categories for the competition: Colloquial Arabic poetry and Standard Arabic poetry.

Diwan Al-Arab posted a video on its website of well-known poets encouraging students to participate in the competition. For example, it shows Zayed bin Karouz saying, “The competition is open once more to renew poetic creativity.” Mubarak Al Khalifa said in the video, “We are back with a new horizon through the College Poet competition.”

Well known poet Lahdan bin Sabah Al-Kubaysi noted that submissions are accepted between January 16 and 28.

Ali Al-Masoudy explained that submissions are accepted from Qatari and resident students enrolled in civilian and military Qatari universities and colleges. He added that a judging committee determines eligibility and later selects the winners. He invited all interested eligible aspiring poets to upload their submissions through the link in the video, which can also be found on Diwan Al-Arab’s social media pages.

The announcement for the competition came while Diwan Al-Arab was participating in the Doha International Book Fair. At the book fair, the center organized a number of poetry readings in a series of events entitled “Oceans of Literature.” Several poets took part in the readings at various exhibits throughout the book fair.

The first-place winner will receive QR 50,000. The second-place winner will receive QR 25,000, and the third-place winner will receive QR 15,000. These awards are for both categories of the competition, namely Colloquial Arabic poetry and Standard Arabic poetry.

For the Colloquial Arabic poetry category of the first edition of the competition, Talib Al-Adhba came in the first place, Saud Al Fattour came in the second place, and Fahd Al-Utaybi won the third place. In the Standard Arabic poetry category, Sultan Al-Kamel won the first place, Ahmad Awad came in second, and Mohammed Al-Abrash won the third place.

For the Colloquial Arabic poetry category of the second edition of the competition, Ali bin Ahmed Al-Kuwwari and Mitib bin Ali Al-Saaq shared the first place, while Saeed bin Hamad Al-Daeya came in second place. In the Standard Arabic poetry category, Ahmed Mohammed Awad won the first-place award, Mohammed Naguib Al-Sayyid won the second-place award, and Abdullah Ismael won the third-place award.