• Entry fee: $5 for the first poem, $3 for each additional poem.
• Poems must not have been published in a nationally-distributed print publication.
• No entry form required. Put your name and address on each page (email and phone optional)
• Please include a stamped, self-addressed envelope for notification of the results.
(Outside U.S., just a self-addressed envelope. No IRC required.) No entries will be returned.
• Make checks payable to Atlanta Review. Checks in your national currency are acceptable
at the current exchange rate. We also accept uncancelled stamps from your country.
• Entries must be postmarked by May 11, 2007. (The postmark is all that matters.
Don’t waste money on express mail–buy a subscription instead!)

Despite having a site which sports one of the worst web designs I’ve seen in a while, the grand prize is a respectable sum of $2,007.

Link (via the Poets & Writers, inc. contest calendar)

Two Ruth Lilly Poetry Fellowships are awarded annually through a national competition open to undergraduate and graduate students in creative writing or English who are enrolled in a university or college at the time of the application. Students must be American citizens born on or after April 16, 1976, and must not have published a collection of poetry or had one accepted for future publication.

Program directors or department chairs are invited to nominate one, and only one student-poet from their programs. All nominations must be accompanied by an official application form, along with samples of the candidate’s work. Applications must be postmarked by April 15th. Students should include their name and address on each page of their submission.

In the special case of a young poet who is not currently enrolled in a university but who is independently pursuing a poetic career, nominations may be made by a teacher or colleague familiar with the poet’s work. Please note: if you are enrolled in a university at the time of the application, you must be nominated by your program director. If you have completed a graduate program in creative writing, you are ineligible.

Each Ruth Lilly Poetry Fellowship is in the amount of $15,000, for use in further studies of poetry. The Fellowship winners will be announced early in the Fall.

For more information, visit their website. The complete rules are available here (pdf).

The Oberon Poetry Prize (from the Poets & Writers, Inc. contest calendar):

A prize of $1,000 and publication in Oberon, a literary journal published by the Oberon Foundation, is given annually for a single poem. Daniel Thomas Moran will judge. Submit up to three poems of no more than 40 lines each with a $15 entry fee by April 15. Call or e-mail for complete guidelines.

Oberon, Poetry Prize, P.O. Box 2236, St. James, NY 11780. (631) 584-5736. Claire Nicolas White, Editor.
oberonarts@optonline.com

No website provided.

Spoon River Poetry Review Editors’ Prize:

One winning poem will be awarded $1000 and two runners-up will be awarded $100 each. Winning poem, runners-up, and honorable mentions will be published in the 2007 fall issue. This year’s judge will be announced after judging is completed.

Guidelines: Submit two copies of three unpublished poems, maximum of ten pages total. Name, address, and phone number of poet should appear on each page of one copy only. Entries must be unpublished and will not be returned.

For further information, see their website.

Tupelo Press Poetry Contest:

Submit a previously unpublished, full-length poetry manuscript between 48-80 pages, enclosed in a simple folder, with two cover pages: one with title of the manuscript only, the other with title of manuscript, name, address, telephone number and email address. Cover letter or bio optional. Include a table of contents and an acknowledgments page. Neither cover letter, bio, nor acknowledgments will be read until the conclusion of the competition.

All manuscripts will be read anonymously by the editors of the journal Crazyhorse, and the competition will be judged jointly by Jeffrey Levine, Editor-in-Chief of Tupelo Press together with Carol Ann Davis, Editor of the esteemed literary journal Crazyhorse. Any poet writing in English who has not previously published a full-length book is eligible.

An entry fee of $25 must accompany each submission, made payable to Tupelo Press, Inc. A stamped self-addressed postcard may be included to confirm receipt of manuscript. Simultaneous submissions are permitted so long as accompanied by separate entry fee.

Entry must be postmarked between January 1 and April 16, 2007.

For further information, see their website.

A competition to find a poem marking the bicentenary of Britain’s abolition of the slave trade has been launched today. The winning poem, on the theme of enslavement, will be published as the 12th and final instalment of a series of poems commissioned by the Arts Council.

“The Arts Council hopes this competition will inspire both known and new poets to add to a powerful tradition,” he said.

This competition is open only to poets who have yet to publish a full-length collection. The winner of the competition will see their work published alongside the 11 commissioned poems and receive a prize of £500. The closing date for the competition is September 28 2007.

Link to the Guardian article; for further information click here.

Poet and translator Sasha Dugdale presides over this month’s poetry workshop at the Guardian. This time, readers are challenged to submit a dramatic poem.

I would like to encourage readers to try writing and submitting a dramatic poem.

Dramatic poetry is poetry in which a character or characters discuss a situation. It can be monologue or dialogue. The important thing is that the poet assumes the speech patterns, interests and personality of his characters when writing the poem.

Email your entries, with ‘Poetry workshop’ in the title field, to books.editor@guardianunlimited.co.uk by midnight on Wednesday March 21. The shortlisted poems, and Sasha’s responses, will appear on the site soon afterwards.

Read the rest of the instructions here.

Update: Read the poems that made the workshop’s shortlist, along with Dugdale’s comments and reviews. Some interesting works here.

There’s a twist in the exercise. (which I’ve used in Ode to a Postbox). And it’s this.

The most common object in the modern world is potentially the most sacred because its restoration to sanctity is totally unexpected. The poet has traditionally helped to keep the sacred alive by associating the world’s great symbols - a tree, the ocean, the sky - with simple feelings of compassion, humanity, love, non-violence, noble resonance. Big ideas have most often been expressed in straightforward language (naturally I mean the direct intensity of Shakespeare, not the gibberish of a lawyer or a government). But as oceans, trees and skies die in front of us, and the world and all its strange wonders are desanctified, our exercise is to seek out the overfamiliar and disregarded, the rejected, marginalized and faceless even, and to load these obscure players in life with larger significance. Here is a work of unification and of ‘invisible legislation’, to paraphrase Shelley.

Email your entries, with ‘Poetry workshop’ in the title field, to books.editor@guardianunlimited.co.uk by midnight on Sunday February 25. The shortlisted poems, and Aidan’s responses, will appear on the site soon afterwards.

Link to the Guardian article

There are a number of deadlines due next Sunday, December 31. Click below to see the deadlines in poetry:
(more…)

Meridian Editors’ Prizes
Two prizes of $1,000 each and publication in Meridian’s Spring/Summer issue are given annually for a single poem and a short story. Entries must be submitted electronically. Using the online submission system, submit up to four poems of no more than two pages each or a story of up to 10,000 words with a $15 entry fee, which includes a one-year subscription to Meridian, by December 20.

Link to the Meridian website for more information (link and blurb via the Poets&Writers, inc. contest calendar).