Salisbury City Council launch a poetry competition for Holocaust Memorial Day 2024.

Can you help Salisbury find the right words for this important day?

Last year Salisbury City Council led its first Holocaust Memorial event, opening a Book of Remembrance, which will now be open each year on the 27th of January. In 2023 the event was a fitting reminder of the horrors of the past that we might learn from them and was embraced by the people of Salisbury.

In 2024 the Council are once again reaching out to the community to make Salisbury’s Holocaust Memorial Day event a response from the city itself to this year’s theme – “The Fragility of Freedom”.

Competition Details.

Poems must be a response to the theme “The Fragility of Freedom” and must connect to the vision of the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust – “Learning from genocide – for a better future”

Age Categories: 11 – 17 & ages 18 and over.

Word limit: 250 words.

Entries will be accepted from anyone living or working in Salisbury at Salisbury Info Centre or by email to bhc@salisburycitycouncil.gov.uk between the 1st of December to the 8th of January and has two age categories.

Please write at the top of your entry your name, age and if delivered by hand, a method of contacting you.

A shortlist will be drawn up by the Communities Manager and two poems selected from each age category by the holocaust memorial-day working group, to be read at this year’s memorial event at 10.30am on Saturday the 27th of January.

The Holocaust Memorial Trust provide a range of resources and materials which can remind, reveal and inspire. These can be found on their website at hmd.org.uk where they also remind us that “Each year across the UK, thousands of people come together to learn more about the past and take action to create a safer future”.

The same will be true in Salisbury with the event open for the public to attend, (details to follow) and the Book of Remembrance available to sign in the afternoon from 1pm – 5pm, and the voices of local people at the heart of our response as a city.

Cllr Ian Tomes of the City Council Leadership Group said, “It is important that each generation learns from the mistakes of its predecessors. This poetry competition, as part of our Holocaust Day, gives the next generation a chance to greater understand the fragility of freedom, and express their concerns and desires for the future in their own way through poetry.”