One of the country’s leading funeral service providers, Avbob is calling all aspiring and seasoned poets to participate in their Poetry Project and Competition.
Poets can enter their poems with an elegiac feel in any one of the 11 official languages on www.avbobpoetry.co.za until 30 November and a selected poem from each language will receive R300 as a token of appreciation.
In a press statement Avbob Chief Executive Officer, Frik Rademan said that the competition was aimed at building a bridge between those who had the words and those who desperately needed to hear those words. “The winning poems will be freely available to all lovers of this enchanting and everlasting literary form, and to all those searching for a verse to give expression to the complex and unique emotions they are experiencing,” he reportedly said.
He advised that entries must be aligned with the theme ‘I wish I’d said’. “The poems, however, need not be about the death of a specific person, but can be any poem with an elegiac sense. Poems which celebrate life, or the brevity of human existence, will also do. The guiding principle must be: Will a person experiencing loss be uplifted by the poem, or be able to identify with it. This theme resonated deeply with us because all of us, at some point in our lives, have felt regret for the things we’ve left unsaid. Perhaps we wish we’d said, ‘I love you’, ‘forgive me’ or ‘I will never forget you’,” Rademan explained.
Story: Herbert Rachuene
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