Poetry/ Spoken Word Competition 2026 - Utrecht: Your Place, Your Words
Call for Submissions
Every place tells a story. With Utrecht: Your Place, Your Words, we invite you to think of a place in the province of Utrecht that holds a special meaning for you and write about it in a poem. Is it the square where you meet up with your friends, a traffic light you cycle past every day, or the bakery of your childhood that no longer exists? What does that place represent for you? Submit your written or spoken poem for the chance to win 100 euros.
- Deadline: 27 of May 2026
- Submission requirements (more details further below):
- Mention or refer to at least one place in the city or province of Utrecht.
- Poems must not exceed 200 words. Audio or video submissions should not be longer than 3 minutes.
- They can be in any language or multilingual.
- Prizes: 100 euros for each of 4 winners, and two (two persons) tickets to a FC Utrecht match.
Create a poem or spoken word piece about a place - anywhere in the province of Utrecht - where you feel, would like to feel, or do not feel at home. Describe this environment as it is now, or as you imagine it to be in the past or future. Poems can explore how places connect us. Or how they drive us apart. How places develop, demarcate or change. Together, all these poems will form a map of our society, showing who we are and what Utrecht is as a city and a province.
Everyone can participate, so don't hesitate and take part! Submissions are welcome from 15 January 2025. The deadline is midnight CEST (UTC+2) on 27 May 2026.
Requirements
- There are two age categories for submissions: 18 years and younger, and older than 18 years (you will have to select the category in the submission form).
- Mention or refer to at least one place in the city or province of Utrecht in your poem (see below a map of the cities and neighbourhoods that make up the Province of Utrecht).
- Language: Poems in any language, or multilingual poems, are welcome.
- We accept poems or spoken word pieces in text, audio or video.
- Submissions, regardless of format, must not exceed 200 words. Audio and video submissions should not be longer than 3 minutes.
- The entry must be your own work and must not have been previously awarded.
- Only one submission is permitted per participant.
Prizes
- Four prizes of 100 euros each.
- A jury will select two winners (one from each age category); an additional winner in each age category will be elected by public vote from the remaining entries.
- The jury is chaired by Gandolfo Cascio (UU) and also consists of Kila van der Starre (UU), Hanneke van Eijken (UU), Paul Feld (Sharing Arts Society), Jasper Albinus, Wafa Alawi (UU) and Tesse Reversma.
- Winners and all other entrants will be notified by email by the end of June 2026.
- All entries will be published on the UU website. In addition, the winning entries will be shared and celebrated on our social media channels, and be considered for publication, sharing or performance in different platforms/venues targeting a broader audience.
How to participate
- Submit your poem by 27 May 2026 using this submission form. We accept PDF and Word files (without personal data in the attachment) as well as audio, video or web files (in this case, please provide a shareable link).
- Do not include your name inside the document or in the file name.
About this initiative
In 2026, Utrecht University and UMC Utrecht celebrate their 390th anniversary. Under the motto Connect. Create Change., we focus on collaboration: with each other, and with the city and region. Utrecht: Your Place, Your Words is an interdisciplinary initiative that gives space to experiences of feeling at home and living together, expressed through poetry or spoken word. Because words connect us, and give us the power to question the present, recollect the past and imagine even better ways of living together in the future.