Submissions are currently open for the inaugural Latin@ Scholarship for the Frost Place’s Conference on Poetry, given to a Latina or Latino poet. The recipient will receive tuition, room, and board—valued at $1,500—to attend the Frost Place’s Conference on Poetry in July in Franconia, New Hampshire.

Poets who self-identify as Latin@, have a strong commitment to the Latin@ community, and are at least 21 years old are eligible to apply. Submit three to five poems of any length with the required entry form by June 15. There is no application fee.

The winner will attend the Frost Place’s annual Conference on Poetry, held from July 12 to July 18 at Robert Frost’s former homestead in Franconia, New Hampshire. The conference features poetry workshops, lectures, craft discussions, readings, and time to write. The 2015 faculty includes Gabriel Fried, Joan Houlihan, John Murillo, Patrick Phillips, and Martha Rhodes.

Poet Javier Zamora, a former attendee of the Conference on Poetry, helped establish the Latin@ scholarship. “My time at the conference was essential in cementing relationships that helped my writing’s early stages,” says Zamora. “Although the faculty is diverse, while at the Frost Place I saw a lack of a Latin@ presence within the attendants….The purpose of this scholarship is to begin to increase our visibility in these spaces. The idea is to create more possibilities for inclusion.”

We have dictionaries and encyclopedias to provide us with official definitions, but sometimes the personal definitions we construct take precedence. These personal definitions may be created from experiences, memories, the opinions of others, or the truths we've come to discover. This week, choose a word you've created your own definition for and write a personal essay in the style of a dictionary entry. Begin with the pronunciation, the part of speech, and origin of the term. Then go on to state the definition and historical significance of the word.  

This week, concentrate on the sounds of words and pick four or five words that you love to hear and pronounce. Don't worry about whether these words are complex or commonplace, just focus on the way they sound when spoken aloud. Then using one as the title, incorporate these favorite words into a poem. Create a narrative if you wish, or allow yourself to focus completely on sound as you piece together your poem. Consider the similarities between the words you've chosen, in terms of their meaning and their internal music.