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“If I say that I am black, what do you know about my interior?” Poet Dawn Lundy Martin delivers the Leslie Scalapino Lecture in Innovative Poetics at Naropa University’s Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics.
Poets—if you’re ready to submit a poem or two to writing contests, look no further! The following contests, open to poems or groups of poems, are considering entries until June 1. Each award includes a prize of at least $1,000 and publication.
Boston Review Poetry Contest: A prize of $1,500 and publication in Boston Review is given annually for a poem or group of poems. Mónica de la Torre will judge. Entry Fee: $20
Boulevard Emerging Poets Contest: A prize of $1,000 and publication in Boulevard is given annually for a group of poems by a poet who has not published a poetry collection with a nationally distributed press. The Boulevard editors will judge. Entry Fee: $16
Southern Humanities Review Auburn Witness Poetry Prize: A prize of $1,000 and publication in Southern Humanities Review is given annually for a poem of witness in honor of the late poet Jake Adam York. The winner also receives travel expenses to give a reading at Auburn University in Alabama in October. Naomi Shihab Nye will judge. Entry Fee: $15
Writer’s Digest Annual Writing Competition: A prize of $5,000, publication in the 86th annual Writer’s Digest Competition Collection, and an all-expenses-paid trip to the Writer’s Digest Conference in August in New York City to meet one-on-one with four agents or editors is given annually for a poem, a short story, or an essay. The winner will also be interviewed in Writer’s Digest, and will receive a subscription to the Writer’s Digest Tutorials video series. A second-place prize of $1,000 and publication is also given in each genre, including rhyming poetry and non-rhyming poetry. Entry Fee: $20
Visit the contest websites for complete guidelines and submission details. Check out our Grants & Awards database and Submission Calendar for more upcoming contests in poetry, fiction, and nonfiction.
A new bill proposes giving the president more power over the U.S. Copyright Office; the finalists for the 2017 CLMP Firecracker Awards; a new biography of Diana Trilling considers her marriage and role as a critic; and other news.
“’It wasn’t a rhyme time,’” said Gwendolyn Brooks in 1968, as quoted in Major Jackson’s essay “Anatomy of a Pulitzer Prize Letter” in the May/June issue of Poets & Writers Magazine. Brooks was speaking about her decision to move away from the sonnet and other traditional verse forms in favor of allying more closely to the Black community and politically conscious poetry. Do you consider the contemporary moment a “rhyme time?” Why or why not? How might you transform the style and/or meter of your poetry to reflect your own evolving creative interests, priorities, and influences? Write a poem that marks some sort of departure from your typical work, in spirit and purpose.
The politics and poetry of Czeslaw Milosz; Emma Cline discusses writing The Girls; writers remember Jean Stein; and other news.
Ian Buruma named new editor of the New York Review of Books; Eimear McBride examines the dynamic between sex and literature; Kristen Tracy wins Emily Dickinson First Book Award; and other news.
Ta-Nehisi Coates Black Panther comic series canceled; thousands of kids audition for TV production of Elena Ferrante’s My Brilliant Friend; student sues author Laura Kipnis and HarperCollins; and other news.
“It had started as a family joke: Dad always orders the mixed grill in restaurants, Dad only wants to go to restaurants with mixed grill on the menu.” Patricia Lockwood, poet and author of the memoir Priestdaddy (Riverhead Books, 2017), performs a dramatic reading of a passage from Jonathan Franzen’s novel The Corrections (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2001) for the literary nonprofit O, Miami.
Margarita Engle named new Young People’s Poet Laureate; the enduring relevance of Czeslaw Milosz’s political analysis; the legacy of Robert Hayden; and other news.
