The Poetry Academy at the Cultural Programs and Heritage Festivals Committee Abu Dhabi has opened registration for its 6th academic year and is ready to receive applications by those willing to join its courses.The new headquartersof the Academy are located at the building of Al Raha Beach Theatre. The academic year will kick off in mid-May and registration will remain open until Sunday 11/05/2014 in conjunction with 6th season of the Millions Poet competition.

During the 5th academic year, the students curriculum, which is related to studies of both classic and Nabati poetry, witnessed a remarkable development. The objective consisted in improvingthe studentsskills and proficiency. In order to supplement the field of poetry with new creative talents, the 5th academic year enabledthe gifted students to gain mastery of poetic and linguistic tools.

Since its launch, the Academy curriculum has witnessed a high turnout at the level of registration. It has also been marked by a significant excitement on the part of those willing to learn and master the ground rules of Nabati poetry, and perform them in an appropriate methodical and scientific manner. The curriculum has enabled many students to improve their creative writing, develop their poetic experience, understand poetry, and delve into the history of Nabati poetry, its meters, purposes, and critical schools.

The proposed curriculum of the 6th academic year, which covers studies of both Nabati and classical poetry, is set to witness more developments. The previous academic year witnessed a significant improvement at the level of the introduced curriculum in studies of Nabati and classical poetry, and this in view of the academic experience in the previous years. Among these developments is the extension of the academic period to five months.

For the new academic year (6th), the project of the student-researcher has been introduced. Owing to this project, the students will be able to work on the publishing a book specialised in all that relates to Nabati poetry and its various aspects. The administration of the Poetry Academy will follow and guide those asking for assistance through the board of the student-researcher, which will regularly convene at the Poetry Academy at Al Raha Beach Theatre.

Throughout the months of the academic year, the professors specialised in poetry, criticism and creative writing will be working to provide the Academy students with the knowledge required to understand poetry, as to its form, structure, theme, meter, rhythm, purpose, and criticism.

The curriculum of the new academic year comprises a set of theoretical and applied lectures in the field of Nabati poetry. These lectures include three academic levels: The first level is entitled The Aesthetic Fundamentals of the Nabati Poem. In this level, the students get courses in a number of basic subjects (Introduction to Eloquent Poetry, Introduction to Popular Culture, Introduction to Prosody, Meters and Rhythms, Traditional Emirati Tunes, and the Science of Rhyme).

The second level examines the Aesthetic Structure of the Nabati Poem. It offers the student an opportunity to learn and get acquainted with the expressive methods, and the poetic imagery and its creation. The courses cover analogy, metaphor, rhetorical devices, embodiment and personification.

The second level also covers imitation and innovation as well as the art of recital. The specialised academic staff will train students in the Nabati poetic arts related to foursome and threesome poems. Students have also the opportunity to gain knowledge of poetic riddles (Al Dursaei, Al Rihani, Al Jamal), which are considered as an independent poetic art.

The academic curriculum includes lectures about media as a language, concept and structure. These lectures examine the role of the media in the spread of local and popular culture and their impact on the poetry scene. The students will be acquainted with the best methods to convey the creative material, including poetry, criticism, as well as heritage and cultural material. In academic studies, both heritage and culture are considered as a core issue and a main concern.

The academic curriculum also covers the study of the common mistakes in the composition of the Nabati poems, the techniques and methods used in the reading of manuscripts, and the specification of distortion in the lexis of poems. The curriculum also includes an examination of the relationship between classical Arabic and colloquial language, including meaning, pronunciation, as well as the composition and the phonetics of a Nabati poem.

The third and last level takes in hand the training of researchers in the discipline of Nabati poetry in addition to aesthetic and critical studies in poetry. This level covers a number of key subjects. The Original Sources of Nabati Poetry: Oral and Written is a subject that includes a set of essential topics, notably The Oral Narration in Nabati Poetry, The Narrator and the Collection and Documentation of Oral Material, and The Output of Field Collection. Also as part of the subject The Original Sources of Nabati Poetry: Oral and Written,the students get acquainted with the different written sources of Nabati poetry, such as old poetry manuscripts. They find outabout the best methods to deal with these manuscripts as a main source for research and documentation in the field of Nabati poetry.

The subject References and Studies offers the students an opportunity to learn about the difference between references and sources as well as documentation using theoretical and applied methods. The students also learn how to determine the relationship between the grammatical, classical, and Nabati poem. In this level, the academic studies conclude with the topic Criticism and the Aesthetics of the Nabati Poem, which consists in a study of a collection of Nabati poems or a number of Nabati poets. The students are required to creatively read these poems and analyse their aesthetics.