~ contests ~
We strive to link to as many poetry film/video contests and calls for entries as we can. (See also the festivals category.) Please let us know about any we might miss.
All festivals, events and calls for work are mentioned by Moving Poems with our best efforts and in good faith. However, do check all details yourself as we cannot guarantee accuracy, and make your own judgements because we cannot verify the things that we share. Events may fail for a variety of genuine reasons, or may be a scam to elicit fees.
Poetry Film Club Festival and Ó Bhéal Poetry Film Festival release competition shortlists
Poetry Film Live‘s film club, which meets aboard the John Sebastian Lightship in Bristol, has released a shortlist of twelve films for their competition, to be screened in a day-long festival on October 18. Organizer Helen Dewbery released the list on her Instagram (below), posting:
Congratulations to the creators of the twelve selected poetry films. It was a difficult choice with many of the panels personal favourites not making it to the final twelve. But after over a week of viewing and discussing the panel decided on these poetry films. They will be shown at the Poetry Film Club Festival in Bristol on October 18th and the final choice will be made by the audience.
Huge thanks and appreciation to everyone who entered – I know how much work goes into researching, planning and making a poetry film or animation; sometimes many many months. And thanks also to the panel for their hardwork.
Here’s the list in text form:
Annelie Guido & David van Driel – pourakamika
Ceri Morgan – Heartlands: Earth & Bones
Claire Rosslyn Wilson – Dead Wood: Unmoored
Diek Grobler – I hav’nt told my garden yet
Greg Roensch – How Much Filipino
Heather Gregg – Res Cue
Ian Gibbins – WHY-EEELA
Jack Cockran & Pam Falkenberg – What the Thunder Said
Lee Campbell – One Day
Petra Kuppers – Lay in You Threaded: a Queer Stroke Poem
Rebecca Goldsmith – Crossing Paths
Yves (bobie) Bommenel – Tarmac GPT Blues
Tickets are available on Eventbright, whence this description:
Programme includes:
- The twelve selected Festival entries
- The Audience Award – (chosen by the audience)
- Celtic poetry films – poetry films from Ireland, Scotland and Wales
- Jane Glennie (artist and filmmaker known for her distinctive films made from sequences of still photographs) – talks on ‘Fragments and fabrications: poetry film between archives, archaeology, and AI’
- Films from the Poetry Film Collective
- Plenty of time for discussion
… and more to come.
The Lightship does not have step free access.
A few days after this announcement appeared on social media, Ó Bhéal released both shortlists in advance of its own, 13th festival: check out the Irish Poetry-Film Competition Shortlist and the International Competition Shortlist.
The Ó Bhéal Poetry Film Festival will take place on the 2nd of November at the Cork Arts Theatre, Carroll’s Quay, Cork. Here’s the poster they’ve made with all the details, for those able to attend. (The films will also all be shared online on November 3rd.)
Drumshanbo Written Word Poetry Film Competition 2025
On August 22nd 2025 a mist-heavy day enveloped Drumshanbo, County Leitrim. But it did not stop us from our mission of beginning our Literary Festival as per tradition, with the screening of the shortlist for The 4th Annual International Poetry Film Competition.
There was a change of venue this year, and the festival took place in a repurposed Methodist church. Now illuminated with stunning Venetian glass chandeliers, the space combines the grand with the homely. This feels entirely appropriate for a poetry film event that remains friendly and intimate while continuing to attract an amazing range and diversity of high quality submissions from around the globe.
Inevitably constraints of screening time available prevented including more of the fine crop of films submitted. Certainly all of the 23 films shortlisted deserve recognition for their many intriguing, engaging and inventive qualities. This year’s judge (Steve Smart) chose to highly commend three films, and awarded the competition prize to a fourth.
Steve, who travelled over with his partner, has collaborated on films with Rebecca Sharp and curated the Poems for Doctors Video Anthology, among other exciting projects. It was their first visit to Ireland. He outlined his thoughts on the prize winning films.
Highly commended films
‘Water’ – directed by Manuel Suquilanda, written by Lars Jongeblond
A lyrical journey of water starting with a single drop and evolving into an ocean. As well as visual experiments with the arrow of time, ‘Water’ also makes innovative use of sound and resonance to deliver a sustained evocation of the motion and idea of flow.
‘The Light You Left Behind’ – directed by Janet Lees, written by Fiona Bennett
The photographic abstraction of the film’s imagery gently echoes the presence of the subjects of the poem. Remembering with delicacy and tenderness, this elegiac and evocative piece is dedicated to Fiona Bennett – poet, director and creative facilitator who died in August 2024.
‘Mum Does The Washing‘ – directed by Iman Omar, performed by Josua Idehen, written by Ehimwenma Idehen and Ludvig Parment.
Bright, humorous and brilliantly shot and performed, the wry satire of this piece grins its way past at speed and with effortless musicality. There are barbs here too, but every one of the quick-fire quips hits bang on target, demanding laughter or a wince, and often both.
Competition Prizewinner (Best Irish Film, Best Film Drumshanbo 2025)
‘Learning to breathe’ – written & directed by Jessamine O’Connor, filmed and edited by Marek Petrovic
This fundamentally grounded piece struggles to maintain a level head in the face of an onslaught of current news stories of fear and destruction from around the world. The honesty at the core of this heartfelt film emerges directly from the simple act of walking the plain ground of a familiar landscape.
Thanks again to Steve for judging this year and for travelling to the event. Thanks to Csilla Toldy, Jessamine O’Connor, Christine Mackey and Matek Petrovic, the other film makers who travelled. It was great to meet and talk to you all. Drumshanbo is not the centre of the Universe, so it takes an effort to get here. Thanks of course, to Eileen O’Toole and her team of volunteers, especially Majella, who very kindly hosted me again this year. And to Willie, the sound and visuals man who valiantly overcame the technical glitch we encountered halfway through the second set, first time ever. The rest of the festival went extremely well, with Cormac Culkeen giving a fascinating poetry workshop on Saturday, and readings from The Great Gatsby and from Brian Leydan, with wonderful MCing from Gerry Boland, among other literary magic. As Steve Smart said,
It’s a wee festival, but a very special one.
You can watch most of the films shortlisted this year on our YouTube channel. Here’s the compilation for 2025.
Roll on next year.
Call for entries: 13th Ó Bhéal Poetry Film Competition
“Submissions are now Ópen,” they tell us.
Submissions are open from 1st May – 31st August 2025. Entries made outside of these dates cannot be considered. You may submit as many films as you like – each must interpret or convey a poem (present in its entirety, audibly and/or visually) and have been completed after the 1st of May 2023.
Entries may not exceed 10 minutes in duration. Non-English or non-Irish language films will require English subtitles.
Awards and Prizes
A shortlist of 30 International poetry-films will be screened in Cork on 30th November 2025. One overall winner will receive the Ó Bhéal award for best International poetry-film, designed by glass artist Michael Ray, along with a prize of 500 euros.
A second shortlist of 15 Irish poetry-films will also be screened in Cork on 30th November 2025. A prize of 250 euros will be awarded for the best Irish poetry-film. Irish entries are automatically eligible for both categories.
Judges
The judges for 2025 are Colm Scully and Paul Casey. The shortlist will be announced during October 2025, and screened (& live streamed & winners announced) in Cork city at a venue TBC, on Sunday 30th November 2025.From 1st May 2025 you can submit via FilmFreeway (€5.00 per entry)
Or Entries can be made Free Via Direct Submission
(as per the following guidelines:)Entries may be made free of charge via email to poetryfilm [at] obheal.ie – including the following info in an attached word document:
- Name and duration of Film
- Month & Year completed
- Name of Director
- Country of origin
- Email Address
- Name of Poet
- Name of Poem
- Synopsis
- Filmmaker biography
- and a Link to download a high-resolution version of the film.**
For queries please email us at info [at] obheal.ie.
Best of Luck!
Click through for much more on the competition, including links to the past winners.
Call for work: Given Words
Poetry filmmaker Charles Olsen is inviting international poetry filmmakers to help mark the 10th anniversary of a project he’s spearheaded called Given Words. As he explains in the CFW,
Given Words is a poetry competition run by me—artist, writer and poetry filmmaker Charles Olsen—for Aotearoa New Zealand’s National Poetry Day in August. Each year I present five words and poets (New Zealand citizens and residents, both adults and children) write poems including all five words. I have also been a judge of the Aotearoa Poetry Film Festival (2023) and the ekphrastic poetry film competition Frame to Frames: Your Eyes Follow (2022).
In the last three editions, the five words have been presented in ‘word videos’ made by students in Honduras, Spain, and Aotearoa New Zealand.
Here’s an example of a given words video from López de Arenas Secondary School, Marchena, Spain, used for the 2023 competition:
For the tenth edition of Given Words I would like to invite poetry filmmakers from around the word to collaborate by contributing very short—from 5- up to 20-second—’word films’, from which I will choose five to inspire the poets of the 10th edition of Given Words. My reason for asking established poetry filmmakers is I would like to use this platform to both demonstrate the possibilities of the audiovisual medium, and hopefully inspire experimentation, as well as young future poet-filmmakers.
In a way it is breaking down poetry film into its most basic element: how to convey a single word through moving image and sound. In selecting the five word films I will consider the poetic nature and originality of each piece, alongside the final combination of the five words.
What will you get out of this?
There are no prizes or laurels or festival screenings. If chosen, your word film will help to inspire around 250 poems by adults and children across Aotearoa New Zealand next National Poetry Day in August 2025. It is an opportunity to be part of this innovative project, and may also get you questioning the relationship between text, sound and image in your own work. You should also have fun!
I have run Given Words for nine years with prizes donated by New Zealand publishers, and a minimal seed fund towards judging fees. No fee is asked of participants, and many schools across Aotearoa New Zealand invite their students to take part. We will promote the results and the winner’s profiles on our social networks during the National Poetry Day celebrations.
Guidelines
- Make a film that presents one word in an original poetic way. The word must be present visually, or in audio, or both.
- Each film should be less than 20 seconds long.
- You can choose any word. We usually choose a mix of nouns, verbs and adjectives. Words in languages other than English will need to be accompanied by the English translation.
- You can submit as many word films as you like, although for the five words we will only choose one per filmmaker.
- You may submit clips of your previous work if it fits the guidelines.
- Please do not include credits or logos.
- Submission is free.
- By submitting you acknowledge that the work is yours, and that you have obtained permission(s) where required.
- Email your word film, preferably as .MOV or .MP4, to nzgivenwords@gmail.com by 28 February 2025.
- Include your full name, a brief bio (up to 80 words), links to your social media and website, and an English translation of the word where necessary.
- By submitting your work you allow us to crop and edit the work, and present the work online. We will include the credit of your work.
- Any questions can be addressed to Charles at nzgivenwords@gmail.com.
Click through to watch more videos from the project and check out the winning poems that these videos have inspired. It’s interesting to see videopoetry being used to spark further poems. That’s kind of as it should be, I think. Let’s end with the 2024 Given Words video:
Calls for work: latest round-up
I’ll illustrate this round-up with a trailer excerpt from a personal favourite that I saw this week from the online Juried Selections at REELPoetry Festival in Houston. I Dream my Dream by Monique van Kerkhof and Bo Oudendijk.
Dreaming about showing your work? From Australia to Mexico and other points in between, there are film festivals that are awaiting poetry films. Recent posts here on Moving Poems have included Drumshanbo, Resonans, and Maldito, and these are still open, as well as Midwest which was listed back in January.
In Australia there is a new poetry film festival to be held in conjunction with the Poets on the Mountain Festival and they are looking for Australian poetry films and Australian Bush Poetry films. Deadline 30 June.
La Poesia Che Si Vede is an international competition for poetry films based in Ancona, Italy. The organisers say that “poetry film for La Poesia che si vede is total poetry, without discrimination of genre or format”. Deadline 27 May.
Fotogenia in Mexico City has been running for 6 years. It has a varied programme that includes categories such as avant-garde feature films and video art, with a specific film poetry category. They do have a number of specific rules though – do check carefully. These include mandatory Spanish subtitles if your film is to be shown in the in-person screening, and that films cannot be shown online at any other public website. Deadline 31 July.
Open call: Maldito Festival de Videopoesía 2024
Spain’s MALDITO FESTIVAL DE VIDEOPOESÍA has just announced open calls for its International Videopoetry Contest (short films) — guidelines here [PDF] — and its International Poetic Film Showcase (medium- to full-length films) — guidelines here. Maldito is
an international videopoetry contest that has been held in Albacete (Spain) since 2017.
MALDITO FESTIVAL launch this contest with the purpose to show two disciplines that, either individually or collectively, are much more isolated and forgotten as we would like. According to our experience, these disciplines are considered marginal and minor in the extent of the great European capitals, moreover, in the humble towns within regional borders where its dissemination is nonexistent.
MALDITO seeks to vindicate video poetry as an art that connects people, transmits feelings and stimulates different ways to see the world. It is also a tiny contribution of enormous people to empower visual art, stopping it from being marginal and damned*.
(* The Spanish word for damned is MALDITO).The festival is organized by non-profit Association Cultural Maldito; formed by a small team of professionals from the film industry, poetry and culture in general.
MALDITO Crew, as lovers of poetry, image and the expressive possibilities of its symbiosis, we pick up the baton and propose to continue the line of action, encouraging their approach to the public, either with the festival events or the educational activities that we carry out.
The festival will be in November 11-17. The deadline is July 10.
Drumshanbo 2023: A brief report
The second Drumshanbo Written Word Poetry Film Competition was a great success with nearly a hundred entries from sixteen countries. This was up 15% on last year. We shortlisted down to 16 films, after a rigorous review process. This included five Irish films and films from the UK, Germany, US, Canada, Australia, and the Netherlands. Films were of a very high production quality, varying in theme from the wr in Ukraine to women’s rights in Iran, mental health, and familial tenderness.
An audience of fifty or more arrived at the Mayflower Ballroom Drumshanbo on Friday 26th August, despite the cool weather, to watch and appreciate the magical intertwining of language and light. The feedback from the audience was fantastic, especially when I interviewed two film makers on stage. The up-and-coming poet Liz Houchin, recently in residency at the Scottish Poetry Library, told us how, when she had a little grant money left over she decided to ask poet and filmmaker Luke Morgan to create something out of one of her favourite poems, “If my mother had a retrospective at the V&A” (see below). Have fun, she told them, and by God they did, creating a virtual exhibition space on screen where her mother’s knitting and sewing enterprises were playfully laid out for all to see. A surreal experience, where the ordinary is catapulted onto the halls of one of the great museums, in so doing exploding the whole idea of the ordinary. Made, Liz said, for all the quiet needle workers in the homes of Ireland.
We also talked to the very talented Grace Wells from County Clare. Grace has been making poetry films for many years out of her own poems. Mostly with an ecological slant, advocating for nature and the environment. Grass was a beautifully filmed eco-poetryfilm where the narrator addresses that most important of natures flora as it meanders through its seasons. All in all a great night. Roll on next year. You can view the shortlisted films on YouTube.
Call for entries: REELpoetry/HoustonTX 2024
The Public Poetry organization in Houston, Texas has announced the opening of submissions to REELpoetry/HoustonTX 2024 on FilmFreeway:
REELpoetry/HoustonTX 2024 is an international, curated, hybrid poetry film festival taking place online APRIL 1-4 and in person APRIL 5-7, 2024. We explore the intersection of poetry and film or video with artists working solo or collaboratively, on a cell phone or in a studio, with new or remixed or previously created work. Everyone worldwide is invited to submit their best work, created in the past or the present, up to a maximum of 6 minutes
In addition to open submissions, the festival includes a series of 40 minute themed curated programs, premieres, commissioned collaborations, deaf slam, live readings, craft workshops, poet+filmmaker talks, deaf+hearing panels and networking cafés. Screenings stream on-demand three more weeks.
REEL’s on the radar of curators and presenters and festival directors from Australia to Canada, from Ireland to Mexico, and you can connect with them at parties and premieres in person or at REELcafes in real-time online.
We’ll be screening juried open submissions in two unthemed categories — one being poetry films or videos under 4 minutes, and the second 4 to 6 minutes in length.
NEW! NEW! This year there’s a themed submission category for work inspired by the concept of “Juxtaposing Reality.” Think about elements, events, ideas, people, places that belong together–or don’t—now, in the past, and/or in the future.
We’re excited to see your work, and it’ll be great to see you online or in person at REEL 2024! REELpoetry/HoustonTX is a project of Public Poetry (publicpoetry.net).
Awards & Prizes
Prizes in cash will be awarded in four categories: poetry film/ videos under 4 minutes; poetry film/ video 4 to 6 minutes, responses to our theme and Audience Choice.
Official Selection REELpoetry laurels look great added to any poetry video or film!
Rules & Terms
1. All Entries must be 6 minutes or less, including credits. No exceptions.
2. You can submit in any language, but an English translation must be included.
3. We accept both new and pre-existing work or a repurposed combination of both.
4. For screenings to be accessible to the deaf, you must show the poem either on-screen or captioned. Poems that are spoken must include written text.
5. Filmmakers may use footage in the public domain from sites like Creative Commons (creativecommons.org)
Call for Work: Button Poetry Video Contest
The spoken-word channel/platform Button Poetry has just announced their 2023 poetry video contest.
We are thrilled to host our eighth annual open-submission video contest!
There are so many ways to record and present poetry, and we want to continue giving people around the world the chance to step up on the digital stage and share their work.
We are looking for brave work that crosses borders or effaces them completely, work that enters into larger social conversations, work that lives in the world, work with a strong, unique voice and palpable energy.
Here are the guidelines. The deadline is August 31. Good luck!
Call for work: ekphrastic video poems
Part of Festival Fotogenia in Mexico in November/December 2023 is Frame to Frames: Your Eyes Follow II. This is an ekphrastic video poem screening and prize competition.
Organisers are looking for films under 10 minutes, but preferably around 5 minutes, that are based on paintings or other works of art. Submitted films must include subtitles – in Spanish for films in English, or in English for films in Spanish or other languages.
There is also the option of working with the painting chosen for the festival: Huapango Torero by leading contemporary Mexican artist Ana Segovia (courtesy the artist and Karen Huber Gallery).
For more information and how to enter see: https://liberatedwords.com/2023/05/16/ana-segovia-painting-inspiration-for-frame-to-frames-your-eyes-follow-fotogenia-link-for-entry-forms/ Where you can also read more about the Festival painting and why Liberated Words’ Sarah Tremlett chose it for the competition.
Call for entries: Filmetry 23
Filmetry, an online festival of poetry and film that began in 2019 and picked up steam during the pandemic, is inviting filmmakers to make new work from a set selection of poems, just as Moving Poems did with our own upcoming haibun film festival. If our experience is any guide, they may need extra help in getting the word out, so do share this widely:
FILMETRY: a Festival of Poetry and Film is an annual collaborative art-making endeavor that pairs filmmakers with poets to create exciting new pieces of work. Filmmakers are invited to synthesize and adapt poetic work into film with only one rule: a commitment to including the text of the poem, in full, in the finished piece. The hope is that through this collaboration, both artistic partners can witness not just an adaptation of a written piece into audiovisual media, but the transformation of the original piece into something wholly new.
PLEASE READ THE RULES BELOW BEFORE SUBMITTING. The festival invites filmmakers to create new work from specific poems available on our website. Work created from poetry not on this list will be disqualified.
In its 5th year, FILMETRY will invite curated work adapted from poetry engaged with cinema. Visit copy paste this link: filmetry.org/2023-work (password: filmetry2023) to view selected work for adaptation.
They have a very tasty selection of contemporary poems to adapt from the likes of Martha Collins, Sheryl St. Germain, Denise Duhamel, and Gary LaFemina. Click through to FilmFreeway for the complete guidelines.
Films for Haiku North America 2023 Haibun Film Festival
We’re pleased to announce that that the following nine films have been selected for screening. We extend our gratitude to all the directors who made brand-new work just for us, with astonishment at the variety in styles and approaches, even with some haibun proving to be hugely popular choices to work with! We’re also grateful to the writers who submitted haibun through HNA last fall, including those whose work was not ultimately chosen. Haiku writers have a unique, centuries-long tradition of using friendly competitions to push the art forward. It’s been awesome to feel as if we’re a part of that, in a small way.
Anyone who’d like to attend the festival on June 29 in Cincinnati can register for the conference here. The videos will of course remain embargoed until that point. Then we’ll ask the filmmakers to make them public so we can share them at MovingPoems.com, one post per film, and at that point we’ll also encourage both the filmmakers and the haibun authors to share the videos freely, online and off, and spread the good word about haibun video.
Please join us in congratulating the directors of the selected films.
—Jane Glennie, James Brush and Dave Bonta, judges
Table for One (haibun by Carol Ann Palomba)
Director Matt Mullins
United States
2:20
The Gone Missing: A Haibun by Joseph Aversano
Director Marilyn McCabe
United States
0:56
Haibun – The Gone Missing by Joseph Aversano
Director En D
Australia
1:00
Unremembered (haibun by Marjorie Buettner)
Director Pat van Boeckel
Netherlands
2:09
The Gone Missing (Joseph Aversano)
Director Janet Lees
United Kingdom
4:03
Hypnic Jerk (haibun by Alan Peat)
Directors Pamela Falkenberg, Jack Cochran
United States
2:56
The Longest Journey by Bob Lucky
Director Pete Johnston
United States
2:30
The Gone Missing by Joseph Aversano
Director Pete Johnston
United States
1:08
The Gone Missing (Joseph Aversano)
Director Beate Gördes
Germany
2:22
