It’s time to put pen to paper in preparation for the 2020 Banjo Paterson Australia Poetry Competition.

The 2020 Banjo Paterson Australia Poetry Festival runs from 16-23 February 2020, but entries for the poetry competition must be in by Wednesday 12 February.

Festival committee member and poetry competition organiser Len Banks said now is the time to get your entries ready.

“What I'd really like to do is get people over the Christmas break to put their thinking caps on and start write some poems,” said Len.

“We already have a few entries starting to come in now, but I'd really like to encourage locals to do it — especially the school categories. I want get people to start thinking about writing something.”

The Banjo Paterson Australia Poetry Competition is a recital competition. All entries must original works and should generally be rhyming verse. The poems are to be performed in person at the competition on Saturday 22 February.

“It might be traditional bush verse in terms of its rhyme and rhythm, but not as much in content,” said Len. “It could be very modern… Banjo Patterson wrote about his life and times and what he experienced around the traps and that's what we'd like people to do now is to write about their own experiences.”

There are various categories from Open to Novices, high school and primary school student.

“We also have this year a school principals’ section. The last few years we've had a mayoral Challenge, this year we've decided to go with school principals, so it will be interesting to see what sort of response we get.”

The week-long festival program kicks off on 16 February with a poet’s brunch at Yeoval’s ‘Banjo Paterson… more than poet’ museum and ends with a family market day at the Emmaville Cottage. Other highlights include the Night Market, Banjo Poetry Brawl, and Festival Dinner in Molong.

“Our feature poet this year is Carol Heuchan from the Hunter Valley. She'll be here for the duration of the festival and she'll perform at all the public events and be one of the judges for the poetry competition,” said Len.

“We also have Greg North coming from the Blue Mountains; he's a well-known poet as well. He'll be running workshops for schools and that is usually a lot of fun with the kids.”

For more information on the festival and poetry competition visit www.banjopatersonfestival.com.au