HAUS FÜR POESIE

This year, the Haus für Poesie is organizing the 33rd Open Mike - competition for young literature.  

Open Mike promotes young literary talent and offers young authors a stage, brings them into contact with the literary public and serves to build networks.

The 33rd Open Mike is endowed with a total of €5,000 in awards.  

Participation requirements according to the statutes   

The Open Mike is open to young authors who are not older than 35 years (deadline June 15, 2025) and have so far neither an independent literary book publication (also applies to e-books) nor a contract for a book publication with a publisher.  

Entries can be either prose (e.g. short prose, short story or a self-contained novel excerpt) or poetry, in each case in German or translated into German (see also point 4).  

The texts must not have been published, including publications on the Internet, as e-books, in magazines, anthologies and publications of any kind, and must not have been successfully submitted to another competition or scholarship.  

Authors who do not write in German and who live in German-speaking countries may submit their text to the competition together with a translator in a translation into German, provided that both the original text and the translation are unpublished.  

Submission  

The length of the submitted texts (poetry or prose, not both together) should correspond to a 15-minute reading time. Submissions that are clearly too long or too short will be excluded from the competition. Neither the sender's name nor a password may appear on the manuscript pages.  

Each participant may only submit one entry. Entries may only be submitted online between May 02, 2025 and June 15, 2025 23:59 (CET).

Application form

Competition procedure  

1st round: Selection by the preliminary jury  

An independent preliminary jury will select up to 12 texts for the final from the anonymized submissions. The selected applicants will receive a personal invitation by the end of September 2025. The finalists will also be informed by telephone. The names of the finalists will be announced on www.haus-fuer-poesie.org   

2nd round: Public final  

The final will take the form of a public reading on Saturday, November 8, 2025 at silent green in Berlin. Each finalist will have exactly 15 minutes of reading time to present their text and convince the jury and the audience.  

The jury will select two winners and award prizes totaling €5,000. The jury will decide on the distribution of the prize money. In addition, the taz audience jury awards an audience prize, which consists of a print of the winning text in the daily newspaper. Deutschlandradio Kultur has been producing a feature on the competition for years.  

Contact  
openmike@haus-fuer-poesie.org    

Open Mike is an event organized by Haus für Poesie in cooperation with silent green. Supported in 2025 by the German Literature Fund and the Senate Department of Culture and Social Cohesion of the state of Berlin.   

Vocations – open space is an event series organised by Haus für Poesie in cooperation with Junge Akademie, Akademie der Künste, DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Program, silent green and Cultural Foundation Wiepersdorf.

Vocations – open space will host in 2025 four events in the Kuppelhalle of silent green Kulturquartier. Each event will feature performances of up to twenty artists. Vocations is radically open to cross-genre and trans-disciplinary forms of musical and vocal practices rooted in poetry.

We hereby invite poets, singers, musicians and performers in general to apply for participating in the Vocations – open space events of 30 September and 2 December. The applications chosen by our team will compose up to two-thirds of our upcoming programs.

Apply with your project for an artistic contribution:

Individuals or collectives can apply with a reading and/or musical contribution with a duration between 7 (for individual performances) and up to 14 minutes (for collectives). Please include in your application the following information:

- A short biography of the participant(s)

- A brief description of the performance

- Work sample(s). Depending on your poetic practice, you are also welcome to submit audio or video files. You can upload any files through the registration form below.

- Technical requirements (as detailed as possible), mentioning as well what equipment and/or materials you would bring along, so we can help organising the best conditions for your performance. Together with our venue Silent green, we will provide technical support and equipment. A grand piano will be available, please let us know if you will need it. 

Also, please mention in your application your preferred performance date (30 September or 2 December).

Please note that due to the number of performances featured in each of our events, on the afternoon prior to the event there will be time for only one sound check per participant/team, not for a complete rehearsal.

The honorarium for participation in Vocations – open space is 400 euros per person. Artists who conceive a contribution exclusively composed for the evening or present more elaborate/rehearsal-intensive performances may receive appropriately higher fees.

Travel and accommodation may be covered. However, our event series focuses on strengthening the Berlin-based artistic scene, so we only have a limited budget for travel and accommodation needs.

The general conditions for an application:

You live in Germany, preferably in Berlin.

You write or perform poetry as a vocal practice (reading, singing, sound performance with poetic references, sound poetry, and other forms of trans-disciplinary performance rooted in poetry). While it is appreciated if the poems featured in your performance are already available in German or English, applications featuring other languages are very welcome. If the poetry of a text-based performance has not been translated into German or English yet, please inform it in your application. Translation costs can also be covered. If translations into English and/or German are already available, please send them together with your application.

Your performance is conceived for a maximum of 7 minutes per participant, 14 minutes for group performances.

Your application includes a short biography, performance description, work sample(s) and technical requirements. Once you have completed and sent the form, the data will be transferred automatically. A confirmation email will not be generated.

If you have further questions, please write to: vocations@haus-fuer-poesie.org

Send your application till 31.05.2025 through this registration form.