Genre: Poetry

End of May Poetry Contest Roundup

G&A: The Contest Blog
5.16.17

Poets! The end of May will arrive before we know it, so it’s time to get those poems, chapbooks, and full-length manuscripts ready to submit. The following contests are open for submissions until May 31, and offer prizes of at least $1,000 and publication.

Crab Orchard Literary Prize: A prize of $1,250 and publication in Crab Orchard Review is given annually for a poem. Entry fee: $12

Southern Poetry Review Guy Owen Prize: A prize of $1,000 and publication in Southern Poetry Review is given annually for a poem. Entry fee: $20, which includes a subscription to Southern Poetry Review.

Anhinga Press Anhinga–Robert Dana Prize for Poetry: A prize of $2,000, publication by Anhinga Press, and 25 author copies is given annually for a poetry collection. The winner is also invited to participate in a reading tour at select colleges in Florida. Eduardo C. Corral will judge. Entry fee $25 ($28 for electronic submissions)

Backwaters Press Backwaters Prize: A prize of $2,500 and publication by Backwaters Press is given annually for a poetry collection. Bob Hicok will judge. Entry fee: $30

Oberlin College Press FIELD Poetry Prize: A prize of $1,000 and publication by Oberlin College Press is given annually for a poetry collection. Entry fee: $28, which includes a subscription to FIELD: Contemporary Poetry and Poetics.

Visit the contest websites for complete guidelines and submission details. Visit our Grants & Awards database and Submission Calendar for more upcoming contests in poetry, fiction, and nonfiction.

All Apologies

The Time Is Now
5.16.17

“May my dead be patient with the way my memories fade. / My apologies to time for all the world I overlook each second. / My apologies to past loves for thinking that the latest is the first.” Taking inspiration from Wislawa Szymborska’s “Under One Small Star,” write a poem that plays with apology or an apologetic tone. What may you have taken for granted in the past? To whom might you offer your apologies, and for what are you sorry? What are you grateful for now?

Safiya Sinclair

Caption: 

“This poem ‘Home’ is not only talking about ‘home,’ a physical place. It’s also talking about language as a home which I feel exiled from.” Safiya Sinclair, author of the debut collection Cannibal (University of Nebraska Press, 2016) and winner of a 2016 Whiting Award for poetry, reads from “Home” and talks about the multiple languages and places that inhabit her poems.

Genre: 
Poetry
Tags: 
Safiya Sinclair
Whiting Award
2016
reading
Cannibal
University of Nebraska Press
Home

Joy Harjo Wins Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize

G&A: The Contest Blog
5.10.17

The Poetry Foundation has announced Joy Harjo as the recipient of its 2017 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize. The $100,000 award is given annually to a U.S. poet for lifetime achievement.

Poetry editor Don Share says of Harjo’s poetry, “Her work is a thrilling and necessary antidote to false news, the ephemera of digital celebrity, and other derelictions. It pushes vigorously back against forgetfulness, injustice, and negligence at every level of contemporary life. Her work moves us because it is in the continual motion of bringing forward, with grace but also acuity, our collective story, always in progress.”

The author of ten poetry collections and a memoir, Harjo was born in Tulsa and is a member of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation. Her poetry draws on Native American history and storytelling, as well as feminist and social justice issues. “In a strange sense,” Harjo once commented, “[writing] frees me to believe in myself, to be able to speak, to have voice, because I have to; it is my survival.” Her most recent poetry collection is Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings (Norton, 2015). 

Harjo’s accolades include the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Native Writers' Circle of the Americas, the Wallace Stevens Award from the Academy of American Poets, and two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA). (Read Harjo’s comments about the life-changing support of an NEA fellowship in the May/June 2017 issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.)

Established in 1986, the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize is one of the most prestigious awards given to American poets, and is also one of the nation’s richest literary prizes. Recent winners include Ed Roberson, Alice Notley, and Nathaniel Mackey. Visit the Poetry Foundation website for more information.

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