Genre: Poetry

Rituals

The Time Is Now
7.14.20

“Rituals—or the tasks we perform repeatedly, not for what they accomplish but for what they mean to us—help athletes prepare their minds for the unknowns they’ll face when they perform,” writes psychiatrist Neha Chaudhary in a New York Times article about how rituals—such as “Steph Curry’s sinking a shot from the tunnel before each basketball game” or “Serena Williams’ bouncing her tennis ball five times before her first serve”—can help instate feelings of connectedness and calmness during anxiety-inducing times. Write a poem about a ritual that’s a part of your everyday life, or perhaps one that you performed regularly during a past phase of your life. How can you play with repetition, pacing, sound and rhythm, and white space to mimic the enactment and aftereffects of a ritual?

Upcoming Contest Deadlines

G&A: The Contest Blog
7.10.20

Escape the midsummer heat and spend time in the shade submitting to fiction, poetry, and nonfiction contests. With deadlines of either July 14 or July 15, these contests include several opportunities for writing on a theme, including a prize for writing about health and illness and a prize for travel writing. All offer a cash prize of $1,000 or more.

Bellevue Literary Review Prizes in Poetry and Prose: Three prizes of $1,000 each and publication in Bellevue Literary Review are given annually to a poet, a fiction writer, and a creative nonfiction writer for works about health, healing, illness, the body, and the mind. Jen Bervin will judge in poetry, Dan Chaon will judge in fiction, and Kay Redfield Jamison will judge in creative nonfiction. All entries are considered for publication. Deadline: July 15. Entry fee: $20. 

Cincinnati Review Robert and Adele Schiff Awards: Three prizes of $1,000 each and publication in the Cincinnati Review are given annually for a poem, a short story, and an essay. The editors will judge in nonfiction. All entries are considered for publication. Deadline: July 15. Entry fee: $20 (includes subscription). 

Comstock Review Muriel Craft Bailey Award: A prize of $1,000 and publication in Comstock Review is given annually for a single poem. Patricia Smith will judge. All entries are considered for publication. Deadline: July 15. Entry fee: $27.50 (or $5 per poem via postal mail)

Los Angeles Review Literary Awards: Four prizes of $1,000 each and publication in Los Angeles Review are given annually for a poem, a short story, a short short story, and an essay. Francisco Aragón will judge in poetry, Kristen Millares Young will judge in fiction, Ellen Meeropol will judge in flash fiction, and Aimee Liu will judge in nonfiction. Deadline: July 14. Entry fee: $20. 

Nowhere Travel Writing Contest: A prize of $1,000 and publication in Nowhere is given twice yearly for a poem, a short story, or an essay that “possesses a powerful sense of place.” Unpublished and published pieces that have not previously been chosen as a contest winner are eligible. Porter Fox will judge. All entries are considered for publication. Deadline: July 15. Entry fee: $15. 

Rattle Poetry Prize: A prize of $15,000 and publication in Rattle is given annually for a single poem. A Reader’s Choice Award of $5,000 is also given to one of ten finalists. All entries are considered for publication. Deadline: July 15. Entry fee: $25 (includes subscription).

Regal House Publishing Petrichor Prize for Finely Crafted Fiction: A prize of $1,000 and publication by Regal House Publishing will be given annually for a novel. The editors will judge. Deadline: July 15. Entry fee: $25.

The Story Prize: A prize of $20,000 is given annually for a short story collection written in English and published in the United States in the current year. Two runners-up receive $5,000 each. The $1,000 Story Prize Spotlight Award is also given for an additional short story collection “of exceptional merit.” Larry Dark and Julie Lindsey will select the three finalists and the Spotlight Award winner; three independent judges will choose the Story Prize winner. July 15 is the deadline for books published in the first half of the year. The deadline for books published during the second half of the year is November 15. Entry fee: none. 

Visit the contest websites for complete guidelines, and check out the Grants & Awards database and Submission Calendar for more contests in poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction.

Linton Kwesi Johnson

Caption: 

“This is a poem I wrote nearly fifty years ago in response to the war that the Metropolitan Police force had declared against the Black youth of my generation,” says Linton Kwesi Johnson in this video for the Geraldine Connor Foundation’s Generations Dreaming online event last month. The recent PEN Pinter Prize–winner reads his poems “All Wi Doin is Defendin,” “It Dread inna Inglan (for George Lindo),” “Mekin Histri,” and “License fi Kill.”

Genre: 
Poetry
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Linton Kwesi Johnson
2020
reading
Geraldine Connor Foundation
PEN Pinter Prize

Different Choices

The Time Is Now
7.7.20

In “The Untranslatable” published on the Paris Review website, the translators of poems featured in the magazine’s summer issue write short essays about their processes. Patricio Ferrari and Susan Margaret Brown, who translated António Osório’s poems from the Portuguese, write about choosing between words in the English language that have Latin versus Germanic origins: “Most words representing abstract ideas stem from the Latin while the majority of words exemplifying concrete ideas come from the Saxon. In a newspaper article, the choice may be irrelevant; in a poem, the choice matters.” Rewrite or draft a new version of a poem you’ve written in the past, switching out some of the Latinate words for those with Germanic roots, and vice versa. How does this change the sound, tone, and other nuances of your poem?

Bellevue Literary Review Prizes Open for Submissions

G&A: The Contest Blog
7.2.20

Submissions are open for the Bellevue Literary Review Prizes in Poetry and Prose. The annual contest seeks submissions from poets, fiction writers, and creative nonfiction writers whose work addresses “themes of health, healing, illness, the mind, and the body.” One winner in each genre will receive $1,000 and publication in the Bellevue Literary Review.

Using only the online submission system, submit up to three poems totaling no more than five pages or up to 5,000 words of prose with a $20 entry fee by July 15. Jen Bervin will judge in poetry, Dan Chaon will judge in fiction, and Kay Redfield Jamison will judge in creative nonfiction. All entries are considered for publication. Visit the website for complete guidelines.

Founded by a group of physician-writers in 2000, the Bellevue Literary Review seeks to explore “human existence through the prism of health and healing, illness and disease.” Published by the New York University Langone Medical Center, the publication’s offices are located in New York City’s Bellevue Hospital, the oldest public hospital in the country. Previous contributors to the magazine include Leslie Jamison, Celeste Ng, and Rick Moody.

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