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Since our founding in 1970, Poets & Writers has served as an information clearinghouse of all matters related to writing. While the range of inquiries has been broad, common themes have emerged over time. Our Top Topics for Writers addresses the most popular and pressing issues, including literary agents, copyright, MFA programs, and self-publishing.
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Find details about every creative writing competition—including poetry contests, short story competitions, essay contests, awards for novels, grants for translators, and more—that we’ve published in the Grants & Awards section of Poets & Writers Magazine during the past year. We carefully review the practices and policies of each contest before including it in the Writing Contests database, the most trusted resource for legitimate writing contests available anywhere.
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Write a sonnet, a fourteen-line poem made up, typically, of three stanzas of four lines, and a fourth of two lines, or a couplet. Use the following rhyme scheme: In each of the first three stanzas, rhyme the first and third lines and the second and fourth lines (a, b, a, b, c, d, c, d, e, f, e, f); and rhyme the lines of the couplet (g, g). For a traditional example, see Shakespeare's "From you have I been absent in the spring...." For a contemporary example, see Denis Johnson's "Heat."
The National Book Foundation (NBF) has begun to roll out its series of conversations about the poetry volumes that have won the National Book Award in the genre over the past sixty-one years. Fifty-one books (the prize was not awarded from 1984 to 1990, which accounts for the discrepancy), from William Carlos Williams's Paterson: Book Three and Selected Poems (New Directions, 1950) to Terrance Hayes's Lighthead (Penguin, 2010), will be covered in short essays by contemporary emerging poets such as Ross Gay, John Murillo, and Evie Shockley.
The project is part of the NBF's Lineage program, celebrating the poetry prize's all-stars since 1950 (two years ago, the NBF published a similar series of essays highlighting its fiction winners). The retrospective, says NBF director of programs Leslie Shipman, is
designed "to generate a discussion [about] how American poetry has
evolved over the past sixty years and it's
current vitality in the cultural landscape."
The foundation is also holding a related panel and poetry reading next Thursday and Friday in New York City. Later this spring the Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis will host a Lineage presentation, and one additional event in another city is also in the works.
To read the daily poetry book posts, which include biographical information, excerpts of poems, links, and contextual nuggets, visit the NBF's Web site.
In the video below, Kathy Bates reads 1952 winner Marianne Moore's "Poetry." The NBF essay on Moore's Collected Poems was written by poet Lee Felice Pinkas.
Poet Nikky Finney, who is profiled in the current issue of Poets & Writers Magazine, reads "Penguin, Mullet, Bread" from her collection Head Off & Split, published this month by TriQuarterly Books/Northwestern University Press.
In this Oscar-worthy performance, an inspired poet takes a moment to digest the news that his rather uninspired poem has not been accepted for publication.
Poet Evelyn Posamentier and painter Elizabeth Jameson, whose own brain scans are prominently featured in her work, use their respective art forms to interpret their experiences with multiple sclerosis.
For one week, collect words and phrases you encounter throughout the day from signs, advertisements, menus, overheard conversations, radio programs, headlines, television, etc. At the end of the week, write a found poem, using these snippets.
This clip features photos of the demonstrations in Cairo's Tahrir Square by Hany Soliman as well as footage of poet Kamal Abdel Halim reciting two poems in protest of Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak.
In this clip from James Wright's Ohio, a documentary by Tom Koba and Larry Smith that is being reissued on DVD later this month by Bottom Dog Press, the late poet William Matthews speaks to the importance of place in Wright's work.
Aspinwall, Pennsylvania–based Black Lawrence Press, while experiencing rather modest weather in comparison to points west, has opted to extend the deadline for its novel competition, with snowbound writers in mind.
"We've received
word from a number of people that inclement weather across much of the
country made it rather difficult to meet Monday's Big Moose Prize
deadline," the press's executive editor Diane Goettel writes in an e-mail. "For this reason, we are extending the deadline to February 15. And don't worry, we won't exclude you if you live in a land of sand and sun."
If you're under the cloud that is covering most of the country, perhaps today is the day to resist cabin fever and consider submitting that novel—or at least cozying up to write. For a little wintry literary inspiration, check out the video poem below by Black Lawrence Press author Brent Goodman.
