Activities

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ASIBA Poetry Competition

ASIBA Poetry Competition 2025

ASIBA is pleased to announce the theme of the 2025 POETRY COMPETITION:

The Sea  

The closing date for submission of poems is Friday, February 7th, 2025.   The competition  is an opportunity to encourage pupils from College (3e) through to Lycée to write a poem of up to twenty lines and/or 160 words in any shape or form on the theme of The Sea. The initial judging panels will be drawn from teachers in our community.

CATEGORIES

Troisième, Seconde (Junior section)
Première, Terminale (Senior section)

You may enter one poem for every 20 students in 3ème, 2nde, 1ère and Terminale in your section.   For example, if you have 28 students in Seconde, you can enter one poem at that level.  If you have 48 1ère students you can enter two of their poems.   If you would like to read poems by previous finalists and winners,  please see below.

HOW TO ENTER

Complete the entry form, making sure you enter your email address, the full name and postal address of your school and the details for each poet.    Please send all the poems in one email from the referent teacher to asibapoetrycomp15@gmail.com 
Each pdf document should show ONLY the poem and its title.   NO details of the poet’s name, class or school should appear.  The poem will be matched up to the details on the entry form, so please use the same title on both.   Please read poetry competition rules 2025
If you have any questions, please contact  asibapoetrycomp15@gmail.com  

PRIZES

Eight book prizes will be awarded to winners and runners-up,  four in all in each section, and forwarded to referent teachers at their schools.  The book prizes in 2024  were poetry collections including A Poem for Every Day of the Year edited by Allie Esiri and The Rattle Bag edited by Seamus Heaney and Ted Hughes

JUDGES

Initial judging will be by panels made up of teachers from BFI/ASIBA schools.   Each panel will judge a batch of poems, randomly selected, and make up a shortlist for the final judging.   Dr Celia Donovan, ACL inspector, will select the winning poems.

Judging the entries will open on Monday March 24th and close on Friday April 4th, 2025.

Judging panels will be made up of two teachers from different schools and no-one will judge poems from their own school. You will be sent the email address of your fellow judge, and a link to a ‘dropbox’  containing your panel’s poems.   You’ll consult each other online and decide on the best one to put forward to the final.  What are the judging criteria?  Well, as Emily Dickinson wrote

If I read a book [and] it makes my whole body so cold no fire can ever warm me, I know that is poetry. If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry. These are the only way I know it. Is there any other way?

 

2024 – ‘Ephemeral’

Click here to read the list of winners and finalists, as well as eighteen wonderful poems.

2023  ‘Home’

Click here to read the list  of prizewinners and finalists, and to read the poems.

 

Model United Nations (MUN)

A number of Model United Nations conferences are hosted by international sections around France each year.  Please contact the person below if you would like your section to participate:

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