The Hands up Project poetry competition 2025
14 year old Tala Rasa’s painting, created in Gaza in 2022.
The picture above was painted by a 14 year old Gazan school girl, Tala Rasas, from Mamounia UNRWA school in Gaza city. It was given to me by the artist herself, on a visit to Gaza in January 2022. I proudly took it back to Totnes and it’s been on the wall of my flat ever since.
We’re inviting you to use Tala’s great painting as a stimulus for this year’s poetry competition. The competition is open to young people from all over the world, but because 2025 marks the 30 year anniversary of the Bosnian genocide, and because of the ongoing genocide in Palestine, there’ll be a particular focus on poetry from these two countries in the forthcoming book.
At the end of the competition a panel of international poets will choose the best 20 poems from Palestine, from Bosnia, and from the rest of the world, to go into a new Hands up book and exhibition which will tour schools. All the proceeeds from book sales will be shared between the Hands up Project and Remembering Srebenica, a UK charity committed to ‘Learning the lessons from the Bosnian genocide, and taking social action to help to build safer, more cohesive communities’
We’re very grateful to the National Education Union for providing us with a grant in order to run this competition and produce the forthcoming book.
At 4.30 pm UK time on 14th January 2026 we’ll be holding a zoom meeting with the judges if you’d like to come along and find out more. This will be for both teachers and students who might like to take part. In the mean time here are the rules in full.
The rules
1) The competion is open to young people from anywhere in the world.
2) It is open to young people who are under 18, of any nationality.
3) The poems must be handwritten and must be a maximum of 50 words long. The poem may be hand decorated or hand illustrated in any way chosen by the young person
4) The poems must be written mostly in English.
4) Poems written or illustrated by AI will not be accepted.
5) On the poem it should be wriitten the name and age of the poet and the name and the location of the school which the young person attends (or in the case of Gaza, the last school attended)
6) A photo should be taken of the poem and it must be sent by email to info@handsupproject.org before the deadline of midnight on 31st January 2026.
Good luck everyone!
Nick
