Entries open in the 2011 John Brooks Haiku Invitational

If you're knocking around at a loose end this weekend then get your poetry head on and you could wind up the winner of some money-can't-buy prizes from Brooks. The 2011 John Brooks Haiku Invitational competition is running and open for entries, on their website but mostly, it seems, on Facebook.

"Regular readers will be aware that we have been rummaging about in our now no longer highly secret underground vault at the Smethwick Works over the last few weeks", say Brook on their blog. "The 1880s Brooks catalogues we unearthed would appear to have been only the proverbial tip of a truly mammoth iceberg of (some would say literally priceless) antique saddles, commemorative jerseys and other assorted Brooks paraphernalia.

"But much like our good friend Kara Ginther, we prefer to see our work in motion rather than hanging on a gallery wall, so various disappointed auctioneers have been politely informed that our precious finds will not be going under the hammer. They will, instead, largely be going under a few very lucky posteriors"

For yours to be one of those lucky posteriors all you need to do is submit your best work, in Haiku form, to the discussions section of Brooks' Facebook page – that's where all the entries seem to be so far – or directly to the blog page. Seventeen syllables is all you get; Brooks don't seem to be too strict about keeping to a 5:7:5 mitre. Exactly what the prizes are isn't revealed, but we're told that "We cannot emphasize enough quite how special, unique and beautiful our available Brooks prizes are. Certainly worth seventeen syllables of your time over the course of a lazy weekend." So that's good.

Happy Haiku-ing. And if you win, let us know what you get!