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Remembering poet Larry Fagin; the intersection of art, funding, and academia; major writers recommend summer books; and other news.
Genre: Poetry
Deadline Extended for Omnidawn Poetry Contest
The deadline for Omnidawn’s First/Second Poetry Book Prize, which was previously June 30, has been extended to July 17. A prize of $3,000, publication by Omnidawn Publishing, and 100 author copies is given annually for a first or second poetry collection.
Submit a manuscript of 40 to 120 pages via e-mail with a $27 entry fee, or $30 to receive a book from the Omnidawn catalogue. Visit the Omnidawn website for complete guidelines.
The judge for this year’s award is Korean American poet Myung Mi Kim, whose most recent collection is Penury (Omnidawn, 2009). Kim has previously judged Bayou Magazine’s Kay Murphy Prize for Poetry and Kelsey Street Press’s Firsts! series for women poets, among other contests.
Recent winning titles of the First/Second Book Prize include Henry Wei Leung’s Goddess of Democracy (to be published in October), Jennifer S. Cheng’s House A (2016), and Margaret Ross’s A Timeshare (2015).
Check out our Grants & Awards database and Submission Calendar for more upcoming contests in poetry, fiction, and nonfiction.
Deadline Approaches for Crab Orchard First Book Award
Poets: Submissions are currently open for Crab Orchard’s First Book Award. A prize of $2,500, publication by Southern Illinois University Press, and a $1,500 honorarium to give a reading at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale is given annually for a debut poetry collection.
Using the online submission system, submit a manuscript of 50 to 75 pages with a $20 entry fee by July 10. U.S. poets who have not published a full-length book of poems in an edition of over 500 copies are eligible. Visit the Crab Orchard website for complete guidelines.
Poet Chad Davidson will judge. Davidson is the author three poetry collections published by Southern Illinois University Press, most recently From the Fire Hills (2014).
Previous winners of the Crab Orchard First Book Award include Kara van de Graaff’s Spitting Image (forthcoming in 2018), Charif Shanahan’s Into Each Room We Enter Without Knowing (2016), and Gregory Kimbrell’s The Primitive Observatory (2015).
Check out our Grants & Awards database and Submission Calendar for more upcoming contests in poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction.
Below, listen to previous winner Charif Shanahan read his poem "Plantation" for the Academy of American Poets.
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America the Beautiful
“Sometimes I still put my hand tenderly on my heart / somehow or other still carried away by America,” writes Alicia Ostriker in “Ghazal: America the Beautiful.” This Fourth of July, begin a poem with the title “America the Beautiful” and let this phrase guide your piece, allowing your mind freedom to reflect on the things you find beautiful (or not so beautiful) about the nation. Read through some other Independence Day poetry by writers such as Carl Sandburg, Walt Whitman, Claude McKay, and Rachel Eliza Griffiths for further inspiration.
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Language Dance
Writer, vocalist, and sound artist LaTasha N. Nevada Diggs mixes multiple languages and uses a variety of musical influences in the poems from her debut collection, TwERK (Belladonna, 2013). Drawing inspiration from Nevada Diggs, write a poem in which you incorporate words and phrases from two or more languages or dialects that are significant to you, whether they are fictional languages like Klingon or spoken languages like Cajun French.
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