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all competitions - RULES FOR THE THIRTY-FIRST ANNUAL AWARD OF THE FERNANDO RIELO WORLD PRIZE FOR MYSTICAL POETRY sponsored by Fernando Rielo Foundation

Fernando Rielo Foundation is pleased to announce the Thirty-First World Prize for Mystical Poetry, which shall be governed by the following rules:

1. Previously unpublished works of poetry originally written in either Spanish or English or translated into one of these two languages shall be eligible for the Fernando Rielo World Prize for Mystical Poetry.

2. Each entry must be presented by its author. The minimum length for entries shall be 600 lines not to exceed 1300. A given work of poetry may be presented only once for this yearly award; winning works or those submitted to the Prize and awaiting the decision of the jury may not be presented for consideration to other Prizes.

3. The Prize shall be awarded for mystical poetry expressing the profound religious significance of the human person’s spiritual values.

4. The Prize shall consist of 7,000 euros and the publication of the entry selected. The Prize shall be awarded for a single entry. It may not be awarded in the absence of a suitable work.

5. The rights of author of the first edition of the winning work will consist in the monetary prize plus 100 books of this work.

6. The Jury may propose selected poems with significant mystical content from among all the works presented with a view toward their publication in an anthology by the Foundation, if the latter deems it appropriate.

7. The cover or first page of entries shall bear the title of the work and the author’s name, street address, telephone number, and email address, where applicable. The use of pseudonyms is thus prohibited. The submission of the work will be done using a PDF format to premiomundial@rielo.com. Another format will not be admitted.

Those who are unable to submit their work via email will send them to the following address:

Fundación Fernando Rielo
Jorge Juan, 82 - 1° - 6
28009 MADRID — Spain

In this case, a single bound copy of the work should be submitted, printed or typed. A copy of the work in disk or CD should be included as well, if possible.

8. The Rielo Mystical Poetry Contest deadline for submitting entries shall be October 15, 2011, and all entries postmarked on or before this date shall be accepted.

9. The President of the Fernando Rielo Foundation shall constitute and chair the Jury.

10. The Jury’s decision shall be made on or before December 15, 2011, and both the winner and the media shall be immediately informed thereof.

11. There shall be no correspondence with the authors of entries. The entries themselves shall not be returned but shall be destroyed ten days after the Jury’s decision.

12. The decision of the Jury is final.

13. The submission of entries for consideration means full acceptance of these Rules.

I understand mystical poetry in two senses:

a) The specific or full sense, which consists of conveying, with sufficient poetic skill, the different modes of the soul’s intimate personal experience of union with God in love and pain. The Christian poet experiences this union in relation to the Most Blessed Trinity; the non-Christian poet, in relation to God alone. The fullest exclusive consecration to Supreme Love, insofar as possible in this life, is what distinguishes mystical poetry from other poetic genres. If religious poetry and, along with it, other poetic genres, are not formed by this union of love with the Absolute, they are reduced to a religere which is deformed, rather than merely formless. This deformation is the departure point for what I term “antimystical poetry” and “antireli-gious
poetry.” It is quite certain that this deformity cannot totally annihilate the transcendence which defines the poet: all poetry is openness to the mystery of suffering that is man.

b) The general or incipient sense, which consists of conveying, with supreme mastery, the intimate experience of love with the Absolute in the various modes of searching presented by the human being’s spiritual inquietum cor. In this regard, I consider mysticism to be open—that is, incipient in all human beings because of the ontological fact that, rather than rational, political, or symbolic animals, they are “mystical beings.” On account of their mystical or ontological status, human beings, from the first instant of their conception, are betrothed to God—that is, united, constituted, and related. Mystical life, in keeping with this definition of man, is the incrementing, by way of grace, of the immanent constitutive presence of the Divine Persons in
the human person. This is what the elevation of mystical life to its greatest possible intimacy consists of.

The aim of mystical poetry is to confess one’s faith. The human word, as the image and likeness of the divine word, with a mystical brushstroke must trace out a language of hidden perfumed essences, unevasively summoning up man’s heavenly destiny.

Mystical poetry is not at all reductive; eminently creative, it is capable of engendering new stylistic resources, new forms, and, in general terms, inexhaustible wealth for conveying the soul’s mystical union with the Creator by means of the aesthetic image. Mystical poetry is also a universal, transcendental vision of a humanity journeying towards its celestial goal. Nature and the cosmos are added to this mystical journey, offering themselves to human beings for the purpose of illuminating the noblest sense of their unitive experience of love.

Mystical poetry differs from religious poetry in that, unlike the latter, it possesses a vast horizon through which it passionately recreates the multiform values of human spirituality. So-called “religious poetry”—often confused with “antimystical or antireligious poetry,” which is ranting, brazen, condemnatory, and even blasphemous— generally exhibits the traits of searching and feeling on a cultural level, rather than creative inner experience. What poet has not posed the subject of religion, even if only tangentially? The property defining mystical poetry is not to deal with God as a topic, as an “existential” description, as a stylistic recourse, or as a kind of experimental choice, but rather to raise loving union with the Absolute to art, to such a degree that the constant of that poetry must evoke this mystical union in a most lofty manner.

The experience of the union of love with God is so intimate, so vital, and so definitive that the mystical poet, in contrast to the so-called religious poet, will never wonder about the existence or non-existence of God, not even as an aesthetic recourse, just as the existence or non-existence of the air one breathes is never questioned.

Rielo Mystical Poetry Contest Information:

premiomundial@rielo.com or call (17 18) 526 36 94

Rielo Mystical Poetry Contest website: http://www.rielo.com