POET Laureate Carol Ann Duffy will judge an international poetry contest organised as part of Liverpool’s John Lennon tribute season.

The Beatles Story is organising the global search for first ever Liverpool Lennon Poet in celebration of the life of the master lyricist.

The final stages of the hunt will take place during the tribute season this October to December, the major two-month cultural programme marking 70 years since Lennon’s birth and 30 years since his death.

The Liverpool Lennon Poet competition is being organised by the Beatles-themed visitor attraction and poet Roger Cliffe-Thompson.

It will culminate in a Performance Poetry Slam on November 6.

Poets from across the world are encouraged to enter unpublished verses celebrating the life of the city legend.

Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy will lead a team of judges who will award prizes in two categories: Performance Poet and Paper Poet.

She said today: “I’m delighted to judge this competition which honours a famous son of a wonderful city.

“Liverpool is a city vibrant with language and poetry and from his earliest lyrics John Lennon displayed a poet’s sensitivity to language.”

Early in the Liverpool band’s career, John Lennon was tagged the ‘literary’ Beatle, having written two books, In His Own Write (1964) and The Spaniard in the Works (1965) plus a number of poems.

In 1965 he performed his poem I Sat Belonely in the Beatles movie Help! and in the same year performed The Wrestling Dog on the BBC2 satirical programme Not Only, But Also.

Competition organisers are hoping to publish the poems in an anthology.

A separate Schools Poetry Competition will encourage secondary school pupils in Merseyside to write and perform their verses at a Schools Poetry Slam on November 9.