Country pub restaurant collection, Vintage Inns, is on the lookout for budding and undiscovered poets in a national competition backed by former Poet Laureate Sir Andrew Motion.

The competition is running from Mon 17th Oct to Mon 5th Dec and contributors are being invited to co-author an eight-line poem inspired by Sir Andrew’s work on Vintage Inns’ latest national press campaign, which honours the Great British rural pub. He was born into a family of pub-owners/brewers and the natural choice.

Sir Andrew will judge the best line submitted each week, so they can be added to gradually complete the verse. Each winner will receive a framed copy of the eventual eight-line poem, plus a meal for four with wine at their local Vintage Inn. There are also 70 signed copies of Sir Andrew’s latest collection of poems, The Cinder Path, which has been shortlisted for The Ted Hughes Award for New Work in Poetry, with 10 to be given away each week (to the winning co-author plus 9 runners up).

This lyrical competition with a difference is being hosted via a ‘Poetry Competition’ tab on the Vintage Inns Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/vintageinns Alternatively, entries can be emailed to pubpoet@gmail.com with full name, address and contact telephone number. Sir Andrew will judge the best each week, which will be added to the poem and uploaded ready for the next line the following week – and the first three lines to start minds wandering are:

The muted brilliance of autumn leaves

The wind’s deep voice soft-tickling the trees

The parting notes of swallows’ cresting calls….

Weekly submissions will close on Thursdays at 5pm, but Vintage Inns Facebook fans can enter as many times as they like. The weekly winning line chosen by Sir Andrew Motion will be published the following Monday. The competition will then re-open for submissions for the next line. The poem should be in rhyming couplets, so lines one and two should rhyme with each other – and so on. And for those seeking inspiration, here is one of the evocative poems Sir Andrew has written exclusively for Vintage Inns, which is themed around discovering your perfect rural pub…

From the hassles of our working

and the tangles of our streets

we arrive in winding villages

where peace and pleasure meet.

All around us worlds of trouble

turn and tremble as they please.

We are rich in the fulfilment

of our vintage life at ease.

Editor’s Notes: Vintage Inns is a unique and 200-strong collection of the UK’s best traditional (yet contemporary) dining pubs specialising in home cooked food, fine wines and cask-conditioned ales. Visit the company website atwww.vintageinn.co.uk/

Sir Andrew Motion was Poet Laureate from 1999 until 2009. He is now Professor of Creative Writing at Royal Holloway, University of London. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and was knighted for his services to literature in 2009. Sir Andrew is also a council member of the Advertising Standards Authority and, since last July, Chairman of the Museums, Libraries & Archives Council. The post of Poet Laureate is a special honour awarded to a poet whose work is of national significance. The incumbent is Carol Ann Duffy, who was appointed in May 2009 for a fixed ten-year period.

For more details on the Vintage Inns Poetry Competition, please call Greg Rees of Connecting Element on 07866 613 907 or email greg@connectingelement.co.uk