Category Archives: Poetry

Deadline: two Poetry Society of America awards, Fri. 15.12

Posted on December 11, 2006 by Keren

Chapbook Fellowships
Four prizes of $1,000 each and publication by the Poetry Society of America are given annually for chapbooks by poets who have not published a full-length collection. Two fellowships are open to poets 30 and younger living in any of the five boroughs of New York City, and two of the fellowships are open to poets of any age living anywhere in the United States. Submit a poetry manuscript of 20 to 30 pages with a $12 entry fee by December 15.

Robert H. Winner Memorial Award
A prize of $2,500 is given annually to honor a poet over 40 who has published no more than one book. Submit a manuscript of up to 10 poems or 20 pages by December 15. There is a $15 entry fee for non-PSA members.

Link to the Poetry Society of America website for submission guidelines (link and blurb via the Poets&Writers, inc. contest calendar).

Posted in Awards, Contests, Poetry |

Deadline: Gival Press poetry award, Fri 15.12

Posted on December 11, 2006 by Keren

A prize of $1,000, publication by Gival Press, and 20 author copies is given annually for a poetry collection. Donna Gelagotis Lee will judge. Submit a manuscript of at least 45 pages with a $20 entry fee by December 15.

Link to the Gival Press home page for submissions guidelines (link and blurb via the Poets&Writers, inc. contest calendar).

Posted in Awards, Contests, Poetry |

Deadline: Chelsea award for poetry, Fri 15.12

Posted on December 11, 2006 by Keren

A prize of $1,000 and publication in Chelsea is given annually for a group of poems. The editors of Chelsea will judge; all entries will be considered for publication. Submit four to six poems totaling no more than 500 lines with a $15 entry fee, which includes a copy of Chelsea, by December 15.

Link to the submission guidelines at the Chelsea site (link and blurb via the Poets&Writers, inc. contest calendar).

Posted in Awards, Contests, Poetry |

Results from Tim Liardet's writing workshop

Posted on November 27, 2006 by Keren

Here’s a follow-up on Tim Liardet’s poetry writing workshop from two weeks ago, the subject of which was dealing with difficult topics.  Liardet’s published the submitted poems and reviewed them in depth.

All the shortlisted poets have responded to the exercise with both courage and panache. There are some fine poems here. The personal tone of the poems is particularly distinctive, and the ease with which they seem to fit together and form a sequence. Though the subject matter is various, as are the approaches, there is a kind of tonal unity. In terms of difficult subject matter, there is little evidence of diffidence. We get the full range here, managed head on or obliquely. All the shortlisted poets have chosen a subject that carries with it some sort of personal or societal taboo; it is the marked differences in approach that make these responses fascinating. All have major strengths; all probably suffer from certain ailments, as most evolving poems do.

Link to the Guardian Unlimited article

Posted in Articles, Authors, Poetry |

Adrienne Rich on the importance of poetry

Posted on November 20, 2006 by Keren

Poetry has been charged with “aestheticizing,” thus being complicit in, the violent realities of power, of practices like collective punishment, torture, rape and genocide. This accusation was famously invoked in Adorno’s “after the Holocaust lyric poetry is impossible” – which he later retracted and which a succession of Jewish poets have in their practice rejected.

But if poetry had gone mute after every genocide in history, there would be no poetry left in the world. If to “aestheticize” is to glide across brutality and cruelty, treat them merely as dramatic occasions for the artist rather than structures of power to be described and dismantled – much hangs on that word “merely”. Opportunism isn’t the same as committed attention. But we can also define the “aesthetic”, not as a privileged and sequestered rendering of human suffering, but as news of an awareness, a resistance, which totalising systems want to quell: art reaching into us for what’s still passionate, still unintimidated, still unquenched.

Link to the full Guardian Unlimited article

Posted in Articles, Authors, Poetry, Reading |

Internet writing resource of the week: poetry writing workshop by Tim Liardet

Posted on November 14, 2006 by Keren

Tim Liardet has some interesting and useful comments on writing poetry:

In this workshop, I want you to tackle a similarly risky subject which you know will challenge a range of sensitivities, even political correctness. I want you to choose a subject which will be intrinsically difficult to write about, a subject for which you will probably need to test out a range of approaches before you strike the most appropriate one. It can be any subject, as long as it is risky, fraught with pitfalls. Striking the right approach is the preeminent purpose of the exercise.

Having isolated the pitfalls, now try and establish a list of the possible approaches. At this stage you must have the pitfalls uppermost in your mind if you are going to achieve the most effective means of avoiding them. You might then interrogate the approach:

a) does it assume knowledge of a subject you do not have?
b) does it take advantage of someone else’s misfortune?
c) does it diminish something serious or tragic, for the poem’s sake?
d) does it set out merely to be eye-catching or sensational?

Link to the Guardian Unlimited article

Posted in Articles, Authors, Poetry, Resources |

Writing in the 'rhythm of the heart'

Posted on November 5, 2006 by Aurel

Courtesy Mary Carole McCauley, Baltimore Sun

When Maryland poet laureate Michael Glaser seeks inspiration for his verse, he looks no further than the two-part thumping of his own heart.

That’s true of Glaser’s chosen subject; in his most recent book of verse, 2004′s Being a Father, he chronicles the ambivalent emotions that arise while raising his three sons and two daughters, now all grown. The poems tackle experiences as diverse as comforting a preschooler after a nightmare, to a daughter’s confident first visit home from college.

(more…)

Posted in Articles, Authors, Events, Poetry |

Unpublished Plath Sonnet Now Available Online

Posted on November 2, 2006 by Aurel

A previously unpublished poem by Sylvia Plath has made its way online. The sonnet, called “Ennui,” was discovered by Anna Journey, a graduate student at Virginia Commonwealth University, while she was researching in the Plath archives at Indiana University. It was published by Blackbird, an online journal of literature and the arts from VCU and New Virginia Review.

The poem was apparently written during 1955, Plath’s senior year at Smith College, while she was studying F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. Notes she jotted in her copy of the book end up as themes in “Ennui.”

“She was observing; her notes were creative, metaphorical reactions,” Journey said, according to The Guardian. “She was riffing off of Fitzgerald’s passages.” The poem includes two original typed versions and handwritten notes.

“Poets don’t just come out of an overwhelming emotional experience,” said Gregory Donovan, a VCU English professor, according to The Guardian. “They come out of study and hard work. That’s what made it possible to write such amazing poems later in life.”

read original article here

Posted in Authors, E-books, Poetry |

Poetry Writing Contest Lets Subway Riders Vent Commuting Frustrations

Posted on October 31, 2006 by Aurel

(New York)Irritated subway riders can now turn their frustration into poetry.

“Vent Your Inspiration” asks riders to compose poems about what they want to improve about the subway system and what they appreciate about the MTA.

Contestants are asked to submit poems of up to 30 lines in a category of their choice, such as air quality, train conditions or positive feedback.

The winning works will be sent to the MTA and Governor’s office with a request for an action plan.

The person with the best poem will get a 30-Day Unlimited Ride MetroCard donated by the Straphangers Campaign.

For more information, go to www.ventyourinspiration.org.

Contestants have until November 20 to send in their work.

Posted in Articles, Contests, Poetry, Websites |

The WD Poetry Awards Call for Entries

Posted on October 23, 2006 by Aurel

We’re pleased to announce the only WD competition exclusively for poets, the Writer’s Digest Poetry Awards! Regardless of style—rhyming, free verse, haiku and more—if your poems are 32 lines or fewer, we want them all. Submit your entries by the December 20, 2006 deadline … and your words could be worth cold hard cash!

First Place: $500
Second Place: $250
Third Place: $100
Fourth Through Tenth Place: $25
Eleventh Through Twenty-Fifth Place: $50 gift certificate to Writer’s Digest Books

Plus, the names and poem titles of all First- through Tenth-Place winners will be printed in the August issue of Writer’s Digest, and all winners will receive a copy of the 2007 Poet’s Market.

Click here for guidelines and to enter online!

Posted in Awards, Contests, Poetry |