Lots of people do this, but I’m doing it in a way that is more useful to me, starting with a prestigious group of rich, well-established competitions closing in June.

Please check details with organisers before entering, as this site takes no responsibility for late or ineligible entries!

2013 Newcastle Poetry Prize

Closing: 7th June 2013

Prizes: $12,000 first prize, $5,000 second prize, $1,000 third prize

For a poem or suite of poems no more than 200 lines

Entry fee: $33

Payable by: [√] Direct deposit     [√] Credit card   [√] Cheque    [√] Money order

Entry: [√] Online   [√] Postal

For details press here

2012 winners:

First – David Musgrave for ‘Coastline’

Second – Mark O’Flynn for ‘Hill End Sonnets’

Third – Philip Radmall for ‘Grounding’

2013 Blake Poetry Prize

Closing: Friday, 14 June 2013

Prize: $5,000

An open poetry prize, for works of 100 lines or less, that encourages Australian poets to engage in the dialogue between religion, spirituality and poetry

Entry fee: $20

Payable by: [x ] Direct deposit     [√] Credit card   [ √] Cheque    [√] Money order

Entry: [ x ] Online   [√] Postal

For details press here

2012 winners:

First – Graham Kershaw for ‘Altar Rock’

Highly commended – Christopher (Kit) Kelan for ‘Celan’

Highly commended – Geoff Page for ‘Horseback’

Highly commended – Mick Ringiari a.k.a Patrick Mc Cauley for ‘Redemption’

Dorothea MacKellar Poetry Awards

Closing: 30 June 2013

Prize: $1,000 first prize plus other prizes

Poetry awards for school children

Entry fee: Schools – $25 up to 30 entries submitted, $50 over 30 entries submitted

Individuals- $15

Payable by: [√] Direct deposit     [ x ] Credit card   [√] Cheque    [√] Money order

Entry: [√] Online   [√] Postal

For details press here

2013 Bruce Dawe National Poetry Competition

Closing: 30 June 2013

Prize: $2,000

For an original, unpublished poem up to 50 lines.

Entry fee: $6

Entry: [x ] Online   [√] Postal

Payable by: [x] Direct deposit     [√] Credit card   [√] Cheque    [ √] Money order

Details press here

2012 winner:

John Watson for ‘Leaving no wake’

I’ll try to post details of competitions and awards in the month before they close, but will keep a list of all of them together on a separate page called Australian Poetry Competitions. If I don’t have the close date I probably won’t add it to the list until I do. Happy to receive info from comp organisers.

For information on other poetry prizes and awards go to Australian Poetry Competitions.

Prize Poets 

Fady Joudah, a Palestinian American, won The Yale Series of Younger Poets Prize in 2007 for The Earth in the Attic, selected by Louise Glück. In 2013, Copper Canyon Press will publish his second book, “Alight.” His translations of Mahmoud Darwish’s poetry, “The Butterfly’s Burden” and “If I Were Another”, received the 2008 TLS/Banipal Prize for Arabic translation from the UK, and the PEN USA for translation in 2010, respectively. Also from Yale University Press is his recent translation of Ghassan Zaqtan’s poetry, “Like a Straw Bird It Follows Me.” Joudah is also a practicing physician of internal medicine and has worked with Doctors Without Borders.

Katheirne Larson won The Yale Series of Younger Poets Prize in 2011 for Radial Symmetry, selected by Louise Glück. Her poetry was highlighted on PBS’s Newshour Poetry Series.  Her poems appear in Prentice Hall’s anthology Literature: An Introduction to Reading and Writing, and journals including “AGNI,” “Boulevard,” the “Kenyon Review,” the “Massachusetts Review,” “Orion,” “Poetry,” “Poetry Northwest,” and others.  She is the recipient of a Kate Tufts Discovery Award, the Levis Reading Prize, a Ruth Lilly Fellowship, and The Union League Civic and Arts Foundation Poetry Prize. Larson has worked for the last decade as a molecular biologist and field ecologist.  She lives in Arizona with her husband and daughter.

Both Larson and Joudah pursued science related careers, which variously impacted their poetry.  “Science and poetry are fueled by curiosity, and both depend on investigation and experimentation. But they also depend on imagination,” says Larson. “While living at a field station next to the Sea of Cortez…. I’d write at night in the wet lab when the station was deserted, baby hammerheads and pygmy octopuses staring out from specimen jars, the sea outside sonorous and insistent.”

For Joudah “…the realm of modern language… is highly infused with the scientific.”  He adds: “If it is cliche or outdated to say ‘poetry comes to one, one does not come to poetry,’ then I think neuroscience might soon prove this cliche to be true, so long as poetry is words in visible and invisible rhythms.  Or I can say my father spoke a lot to me about poetry and grammar when I was a kid.”

The Sillerman First Book Prize for African Poets

The Sillerman First Book Prize for African Poets is part of the recently established African Poetry Book Fund and Series. The winner of this prize will receive USD $1000 and publication through the University of Nebraska Press and Amalion Press in Senegal.

(or: You’ll Never Adjudicate in this Town Again)

Two years ago, I spent the entire spring and summer sitting in my garden reading 171 new Canadian poetry books published in 2009-2010. I was one of three jurors chosen to select the 2010 winner and shortlist for Canada’s Governor General’s Award for Poetry.

Being paid to read poetry for five months in a private garden surrounded by swallowtail butterflies and garter snakes sunning on rocks may seem like a dream job. But the dream faded by September in the jury room in Ottawa once I fully grokked the protocols and structure of the adjudication system itself, and the role I would be required to play in that process.

(Please note: The comments that follow are a general critique of the Canada Council’s protocols for adjudicating the Poetry GG. The problems are systemic and structural. They are not limited to one particular year.)

My previous experience adjudicating a major arts award had been a thoroughly positive one: a few years earlier I had been tapped to sit on a BC Arts Council jury to select the Creative Writing grants for the year. So when the Canada Council phoned in 2010 and invited me to be a juror for the Poetry GG, I didn’t hesitate.

THE BC ARTS COUNCIL MODEL

In the case of the BC Arts Council Creative Writing grants, after spending a month reading all 154 project proposals privately (each proposal included a 20-page manuscript sample), the five jurors then spent five full days together in a board room in Victoria to determine the approximately 35 grant recipients.

In the room, the Program Officer unobtrusively guided us through a well-organized protocol in which all five jurors discussed and debated each of the 154 proposals in turn over the five days, assigning (and revising) numeric values for each proposal. By the time we were done, the numeric values had generated a ranked list of all 154 proposals. The jury could rejig it to correct any obvious omissions. We’re the jury after all, and formulae shouldn’t supersede common sense. But I don’t recall much rejigging happening. The money was then awarded from the top down, until the pot was empty.

The entire experience was fun and, for me at least, creatively stimulating. The tone in the room was jovial (although not without debate). I made friendships that persist to this day. And, most importantly, I felt we had done the fairest and most honest job possible of selecting arts award recipients from a pool of excellent candidates.

(Sidebar: The most important thing I learned from my time on the BC Arts Council jury is that just because you don’t get a grant, doesn’t mean the jury didn’t like your project. They may have loved your project. They just loved 35 others a little bit more.)

In a single word (or five): I went away feeling clean. I cannot say the same of my experience on the Canada Council jury for the Poetry GG.

THE GOVERNER GENERAL’S POETRY AWARD MODEL

Jury Selection

The three jurors for the Poetry GG (all poets with books of our own) are selected by the Canada Council, presumably on the basis of other juries we have served on, or awards we may have won, as well as our own publications. In my case, the Canada Council officer referenced my poetry books listed on the League of Canadian Poets website when she called to invite me onto the GG jury. I had also been shortlisted for the Gerald Lampert Award two years earlier. And I suspect my prior service on the BC Arts Council jury was a factor.

My two fellow jurors also received a phone call “out of the blue” inviting them to sit on the Poetry GG jury. In other words, this wasn’t a gig any of us applied for.

Reading Time

In theory, the three jurors each had five months to read the 171 books, which were shipped to us continuously over that period of time. (We each received our own complete set of books, which were ours to keep.)

However, in actual fact, I was the only one on the final jury who had the full five months to read the books. My two colleagues were each last-minute replacements for the original jurors who withdrew late in the game. So the other two final jurors had a mere eight weeks and five weeks respectively to read and evaluate 171 books.

Conflict of Interest Rules

Due to controversies in previous years over perceived conflict of interest involving certain GG jurors and the winners, the conflict of interest rules were tightened up by the time my year came round. Among other things, a juror cannot remain on the jury if there is a book in competition that she has reviewed or blurbed, or in which she is listed in the acknowledgements as making any sort of contribution to the book (even if the contribution is unbeknownst to the juror).

However, the titles for each year’s GG competition are being submitted continuously by their publishers throughout the months that the jurors are reading. Even the Canada Council doesn’t know what the full list of books in competition will be until shortly before the three jurors fly to Ottawa for the single day of jury deliberations.

Consequently, a juror can be three or four months into her GG reading when a book lands on her doorstep that she has blurbed or is thanked in, and that’s it. She must excuse herself from the jury and walk away. And the Canada Council must scramble to find a replacement juror. At least these were the rules in 2010.

The ‘Long List’

Ten days prior to flying to Ottawa for our single day of jury deliberations, each juror is required to submit a list of up to ten titles that constitute our top picks. The Canada Council then compiles the three lists and emails the three jurors the single combined list containing all of our top picks, listed alphabetically by author.

To me, this is obviously a Long List. And as such, it is in everybody’s interest to release it publicly, and with as much fanfare as it deserves, and as much fanfare as every other literary Long List receives. Besides which, your tax dollars paid to generate this Long List. It is wrong to keep it secret. So, for all of the above reasons, after the 2010 Poetry GG Short List and winner had been officially announced by the Canada Council, I posted our jury’s Long List on Facebook.

The Canada Council was not amused. The Council claims this Long List is not a Long List but some kind of in-house work product and, as such, is covered under jury confidentiality rules. I do not anticipate further invitations for jury duty. But if I had it to do over, I would do the same (except I would post the Long List even more widely than I did).

If nothing else, our Long List revealed that there was, in fact, a much broader aesthetic sensibility among the jury than our Short List or winner would suggest. Which brings me to the nub of the problem:

Jury Deliberations – Timeframe

The three jurors meet in a Canada Council boardroom in Ottawa for a single day, from 9:00 am to 5:00 pm, with a one hour lunch break and a couple of shorter breaks. So, in approximately 6.5 hours of working time, we not only determine the five titles for the Short List and the one winner, we must also draft the jury statements about each book (two separate statements for the winning title) that will be widely used by media, authors and publishers. Try being scintillating, cogent and pithy – six times! – after your brains have been wrung dry of all judgment and your entrails are strewn across the board table.

We are flown to Ottawa the day before the jury meets, put up in a nearby hotel, and flown home the day after.

Obviously 6.5 hours is a ridiculously short time to make a decision on Canada’s most prestigious poetry award – and from a field of 171 candidates. It’s an insult to every author, publisher and juror participating in the GG competition.

Jury Deliberations – Process

In theory, we had already winnowed our field of 171 titles to just 22 – the titles on our Long List That Isn’t a Long List. So we were actually selecting the five finalists and winner from a field of 22 in that 6.5-hour period. And in fact, those 22 books were the ONLY books on the table when we entered the room – all face up with their carefully designed covers and titles vying furiously for our eye.  (The remaining 149 contenders were around somewhere – maybe in boxes. I don’t recall.)

We started working our way through the 22 books one by one (alphabetically by author’s last name). The Canada Council Program Officer in the room held up each book (or slid it forward on the table). We discussed it briefly and decided if we wanted to keep it on the table, in contention for the Short List, or physically set it aside.

Although it was possible to resurrect a title from the set-aside pile of Long Listees, I felt considerable unspoken pressure not to do this – not to take any step backwards – because of the intense time constraints we were working under. I can only assume my colleagues felt likewise.

It was also possible (although this never occurred to me at the time, and was certainly never mentioned) for a juror to call back a book from the pile of 149 also-rans that were moldering in boxes somewhere if she felt upon reflection that there was a better, more vigorous title among them than on the Short List being generated in the room.

Because of the time constraints, there was subtle but considerable steerage to keep moving forward, never back – to keep narrowing the field, never widening, never reconsidering…

Jury Deliberations – The Short List

Somehow by mid-afternoon we generated a Short List of five finalists. There was one book on our Short List that was sharply contested in the room. But the other four titles basically came down to being the books that no one fought too hard against. Yes, good books all. But markedly better than the 166 left behind? I can’t really say that they were.

The most heavily experimental works (many of which I loved!) were all total non-starters in the room. They simply had no hope. You pick your battles.

Consequently, the GG Short List for any given year is formed more by various jurors’ debating skills and level of obstinance and caffeination than by a measured analysis (such as the BC Arts Council system of numerical ranking). The result of such a process as the GG uses will tend to be a Short List of well-crafted, comprehensible, uncontroversial books. The one non-conforming title on our 2010 Short List got there simply because the juror arguing for it (me) wore down the juror arguing against it. And the clock was ticking.

Jury Deliberations – Picking the GG Winner

Somewhere toward the end of the day, in the process of our final deliberations to determine the GG winner from our Short List of five titles, the Program Officer told us that we must have consensus on the winner. All three jurors must be able to get behind the winning book.

And so, to cut an already very long posting short, that criterion became the primary factor in selecting Canada’s 2010 winner of the Poetry GG (and I would suspect for most other years as well). It was the one book out of the five that no one in the room had any major problem with.  (Hardly the stuff blurbs are made of.)

The high-minded ideals we had entered with had been pulverized by a process that is far too rushed, and with no mechanism (or time) to backtrack, review, or deploy common sense to halt a runaway train.

We ground out our requisite blurbs, walked around the corner to the nearest bar, got hammered, retired to our respective hotel rooms, and flew home the next day – our duty done.

For Future GG Juries (are you listening, Canada Council?) :

1. One day in the jury room is not enough. Fix that first!

2. The adjudication process needs to occur in stages. There needs to be a gap of time for reflection and reconsideration before the jury finalizes the Short List from which the winner will be selected. For it is at this point that jurors, if given some space to privately collect their thoughts and reflect on their five months of reading, will likely say: “Book A never even got on the table, but Book B is on the Short List? That’s crazy!” It may mean a skyped or teleconferenced jury for one or both stages.

3. Some system of numerical ranking needs to be used. A book (or an entire poetic style) that is hated by one juror can nevertheless make the Short List in a system of numerical ranking. Under the current system, entire schools/streams of Canadian poetry can be shut out of all mention in the GGs if a single juror can’t abide it.

4. Each of the three jurors should be allowed to place her top pick of all titles on the Short List. The two remaining spots on the Short List can be filled by a system of numerical ranking. This too will widen the aesthetic scope of the Short List and potentially enable experimental works to be better represented, thus creating a Short List that more accurately reflects the true diversity of current Canadian poetry and poetics.

5. Publicly release the goddam Long List! And do it with pride, honoring the authors and publishers who are on it.

6. Fix the ridiculous conflict of interest rules. You can’t have two-thirds of the jury bailing in the final weeks before adjudication. If a juror has a conflict on a particular book, then allow her to simply be silent on that title. This is the way BC Arts Council handles conflict of interest. The juror announces it in the room and does not weigh in on that candidate.

More than a decade later, Corral’s poetry is winning even higher praise. In the last twelve months, he became the first Latino poet to receive the Yale Younger Poets Prize, won the 2011 Whiting Award, and now has published his first book of poetry, Slow Lightning, new from Yale University Press this month.

A profile of Corral in the Arizona Republic describes the years between that Beowulf poem and Slow Lightning, the manuscript of which was completed last year in a Starbucks in Corral’s home town of Casa Grande, Arizona. Corral, who grew up speaking Spanish at home, was greatly influenced by the Chicano writers he studied as an undergraduate at Arizona State University, a fact that is obvious in the mixture of English and Spanish that appears in his poems. “I don’t use Spanish as ethnic embellishment,” Corral said in an interview earlier this month with Publishers Weekly. Instead, “It mirrors the way I think…If the Spanish is taken out, the poem collapses.”

Corral’s subject matter is weighty: his poems deal with Mexican-American border politics, AIDS, and broader themes of identity, erotics, and family connection. Yet his poetry is not easily summarized. Indeed, in the foreword to Slow Lightning, Carl Phillips begins his tenure as judge of the Yale Series of Younger Poets Prize, explaining how Corral’s distinctive bilingual style is just one symptom of the way in which the poet “resists reductivism. Gay, Chicano, ‘Illegal-American,’ that’s all just language, and part of Corral’s point is that language, like sex, is fluid and dangerous and thrilling, now a cage, now a window out.” Corral navigates this fluidity of language with expertise, evoking not only “intimacy, humor, outrage, longing, fear,” but also “quiet beauty” and a “joyful exuberance” Phillips locates in the following excerpt:

…At my touch,

            a piano

melts like a slab

            of black ice. I’m

steam rising,

            dissipating. I’m a ghost undressing.

I’m a cowboy

            riding bareback.

My soul is

            whirling

above my head like a lasso.

            My right hand

a pistol. My left

            automatic. I’m knocking

on every door…

Excerpted from “Self-Portrait with Tumbling and Lasso” by Eduardo C. Corral in Slow Lightning Copyright © 2011 by Yale University.

Checking around I see there are a number of other prizes for poetry collections and pamphlets, in addition to numerous ones, large and tiny, for single poems.

This is an excellent thing. Poets are unlikely to be rewarded with huge book sales, and without the newsworthy prizes probably wouldn’t attract much media attention. Yet poetry is a major art form and its best practitioners need some recognition.

Most poets, of course, don’t win prizes or sell many books, yet they keep on writing and publishing. I do it myself, but I can’t really say why. It’s sort of a hobby, but also more serious than that.

The current crop of prizewinners did the same, some for many years, before receiving anything more than publication and some praise. Perhaps a little of that praise could be spared for the creators of the prizes. They encourage the struggling, reward success and enhance the reputation of the art.

For most undergraduate poets, the Seminar is the first opportunity they have had to focus on poetry without having to juggle other commitments like degree requirements and part-time jobs.  In the Seminar, all scheduled events are optional (though fellows almost always choose to participate).  Freedom from routine constraints is typically both liberating and unsettling.  Though the staff and visiting poets offer plenty of opportunities for interaction and discussion, fellows must individually find ways to structure their time, to strike a balance between working and relaxing, between seeking solitude and hanging out with others.

“For young writers, crossing over from being a creative writing student–to being an actual writer–can be a challenge,” director G.C. Waldrep says.  “Poetry is not just a subject, not just an art; it’s also a discipline, in the old sense of that word.  What we hope is that the Bucknell experience will help talented younger poets bridge their undergraduate experiences and the rest of their writing lives–to start to find out what the art and craft of poetry really mean to them, beyond the constraints of the classroom.

Seminar alumni include such accomplished poets as this blog’s host, Ruth Ellen Kocher, Kevin Young, Mark Wunderlich, Mary Szybist, Kyle Dargan, Emily Rosko, Ilya Kaminsky, Ron Mohring, Stacey Waite, K.A. Hays and many others who have gone on not only to write thousands of poems, but also to become literary scholars, editors, yoga teachers, dentists, and musicians, among other occupations.  In recent years, visiting poets have included Arthur Sze, Carol Moldaw, Eleni Sikelianos, Laurie Kutchins Terrance Hayes, Dana Levin, Tracy K. Smith and Kazim Ali.

For the past two years, the Younger Poets have lived together in Bucknell’s Seventh Street House, a residence building that is centrally located on campus, close to the dining hall, the athletic center and the Stadler Center for Poetry.  Younger Poets have access to all campus facilities, including the gym and pool, the Mildred Martin poetry library, housed in the Stadler Center and the University’s Bertrand Library.

Creative writing teachers:  please encourage your accomplished undergraduate poets to apply.  The next Seminar will be held from June 10 – July 1, 2012.  Visiting poets Rick Barot and Brigit Pegeen Kelly will join staff members G.C. Waldrep, Deirdre O’Connor, Diana Park and Jamaal May.  The application deadline is January 31, 2012.

More information and application instructions can be found here.

Deirdre O’Connor is director of the Bucknell University Writing Center and Associate Director of the Bucknell Seminar for Younger Poets. Her book, Before the Blue Hour, was the winner of the Cleveland State Poetry Prize for 2001. Her work has appeared in Poetry, XConnect, the Laurel Review, Painted Bride Quarterly, and other journals. Her new manuscript of poems, “The Mouth of the Sparrow,” is seeking a publisher and has been a finalist for the National Poetry Series, the Beatrice Hawley Award, the Vassar Miller Prize, and others. She lives in Central Pennsylvania.

Color outside the lines.                            

More often than I’d like to admit, I am a poet of routine.  Papers to grade, course planning and new job responsibilities mean less time for writing. The professor me often takes priority over poet me. Add being a father of two and a husband to the mix and, like many writers I know, I find myself caught in lean days where I dedicate fewer hours to my art. Thankfully, some poet friends have offered a remedy.

At the invitation of fellow Cave Canem member Curtis L. Crisler, I drove two hours north from my home in Indianapolis to Fort Wayne, Indiana, recently. Curtis, a professor at IPFW, had a grand plan: what if he, our Cave Canem brother Ross Gay, a professor at IU Bloomington, and I, a professor at IUPUI, joined voices for a reading on his campus? The event would be the start of a partnership Curtis envisioned between the three IU campuses that he ingeniously dubbed the Indiana Chitlin Circuit.

A name like that bears ghosts.

The original Chitlin Circuit was a series of venues often identified as roadhouses or juke joints that gave African American performers an outlet for their art in the Jim Crow South. In his 2011 book The Chitlin’ Circuit and the Road to Rock `n’ Roll, author Preston Lauterbach links the roots of the network to entertainment in black communities or “Bronzevilles” of the North. According to Lauterbach, promoters like Denver Ferguson, a club owner and numbers runner in Indianapolis, helped establish the Southern trail. The clubs featured comedians, legendary soul and blues artists like Ray Charles and Sister Rosetta Tharpe, and a fair share of illegal business ranging from the aforementioned numbers game to bootlegging and the vices between. In essence, the Chitlin Circuit was a social hub, a proving ground, and a lucrative business for those calling the shots. It was high art and high drama.

And the name?

“They named it the chitlin circuit because sometimes you got paid with a plate of chitlins, or hot dogs and hamburgers,”  Louisiana blues man Bobby Rush, a circuit veteran, revealed in a 2009 interview with The Star-Tribune of Minneapolis. Simple enough. Perhaps, when their night’s pay didn’t fold or jingle, the greatest reward for the artists who ventured the circuit was the pleasure of sharing their talent, to be heard and appreciated.

Curtis saw our 21^st century “circuit” as a way to attract touring writers to Indiana by offering the chance to perform in each of the cities where we, the organizers, taught. Not one reading or one shot to gain a new audience but three, more appearances equaling more opportunities. After hearing Curtis’ plan, Ross and I were eager to participate.  A reading featuring the organizers of the contemporary circuit was the perfect way to introduce the concept to the public.

Keeping the juke vibe alive, Curtis decided our trio would play four different “sets”: a “call and response” jam where we took turns reading poems that complimented the images and themes we heard in each other’s work; a “slide outs” solo session where each of us read three poems before passing the mic; the “lil’ mo’ hot sauce” round where we returned to alternating our voices and, hopefully, turning up the heat; and a finale that featured a reading of the Lucille Clifton poem “won’t you celebrate with me” which ends in the oft quoted lines:

It was our way of honoring Clifton, a masterful poet we admired who died last February, and a fitting tribute to the trials of Chitlin Circuit artists. Jim Crow did indeed fail, and musicians who avoided being silenced by navigating the circuit had plenty to celebrate.

The playful nature of Curtis’ programming rubbed off on the crowd. After the reading, we huddled and compared notes. The thing we noticed most? Looking up from the lines of our poems and being greeted with the most gracious smiles from faculty, from students, all sincerely engaged. We reveled in the spirit, sharing the stories behind the poems like Rush’s tales from the road. It was different than the typical reserved university readings to which we were accustomed (praise to the format and the fried fish and sweet potato pie—an authentic and satisfying touch— for that). By all accounts, the first stop on the Indiana Chitlin Circuit was a smash.

The next day, I drove back to Indianapolis with boundless energy. Still excited from our reading, I turned my attention to revising poems for my second book, a process that had stalled because of demands at work. Once the euphoria from the previous night wore off, I talked with Ross and Curtis about the next step for the circuit. Like the Dark Room Collective before us, we would provide a service to our respective communities by arranging literary events that might not be seen otherwise. It was enough to shake me out of the rut that postponed my art, new incentive to work smarter with the few free hours I had.

I was happy, rejuvenated, and overwhelmingly proud. Which begs the question, if you’re stuck in a rut, when was the last time you shocked your artistic sensibilities?

Mitchell L. H. Douglas is an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Indiana University-Purdue University, Indianapolis. A cofounder of the Affrilachian Poets, his debut collection, Cooling Board: A Long-Playing Poem (Red Hen Press, 2009), was nominated for a 2010 NAACP Image Award in the Outstanding Literary Work-Poetry category and a 2010 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award. His second poetry collection \blak\ \al-fə bet\, winner of the 2011 Lexi Rudnitsky/Editor’s Choice Award, is forthcoming from Persea Books. (above author photo by Rachel Eliza Griffiths.)

The Prize is open to anyone over 16 years of age. Entries must be entirely the work of the entrant and must never have been published, self-published, published on any website or public online forum, broadcast nor winning or placed in any other competition. The Entry fee is £5 per flash fiction, £6 per poem or £7 per story (you can send as many entries as you like).

Maximum of 5000 words for short stories (no mimimum)
Maximum of 42 lines for poems (no minimum)
Maximum of 250 words for flash fiction (no minimum)
The title is NOT included in the word count or line count

Closing date for receipt of postal entries: 30th June 2011 5.30pm, For online entries: 30th June 2011 Midnight GMT

Good Luck!

http://www.bridportprize.org.uk/index.htm

Anyway, someone who has kept up with the TS Eliot and the ten shortlisted is Dave at Dave Poems. So, why not go have a gander on his breakdown of the shortlist.

All I’m going to do is say HURRAH! Derek Walcott won! He scooped it for White Egrets.

I’m also going to give you a poem that he wrote, a demonstration of his excellence:

The Lost Empire (via the Guardian)

I

And then there was no more Empire all of a sudden.
Its victories were air, its dominions dirt:
Burma, Canada, Egypt, Africa, India, the Sudan.
The map that had seeped its stain on a schoolboy’s shirt
like red ink on a blotter, battles, long sieges.
Dhows and feluccas, hill stations, outposts, flags
fluttering down in the dusk, their golden aegis
went out with the sun, the last gleam on a great crag,
with tiger-eyed turbaned Sikhs, pennons of the Raj
to a sobbing bugle. I see it all come about
again, the tasselled cortège, the clop of the tossing team
with funeral pom-poms, the sergeant major’s shout,
the stamp of boots, then the volley; there is no greater theme
than this chasm-deep surrendering of power
the whited eyes and robes of surrendering hordes,
red tunics, and the great names Sind, Turkistan, Cawnpore,
dust-dervishes and the Saharan silence afterwards.

II

A dragonfly’s biplane settles and there, on the map,
the archipelago looks as if a continent fell
and scattered into fragments; from Pointe du Cap
to Moule à Chique, bois-canot, laurier cannelles,
canoe-wood, spicy laurel, the wind-churned trees
echo the African crests; at night, the stars
are far fishermen’s fires, not glittering cities,
Genoa, Milan, London, Madrid, Paris,
but crab-hunters’ torches. This small place produces
nothing but beauty, the wind-warped trees, the breakers
on the Dennery cliffs, and the wild light that loosens
a galloping mare on the plain of Vieuxfort make us
merely receiving vessels of each day’s grace,
light simplifies us whatever our race or gifts.
I’m content as Kavanagh with his few acres;
for my heart to be torn to shreds like the sea’s lace,
to see how its wings catch colour when a gull lifts.

You know, awesome things happen where I live just now. Tonight for instance, I get to listen to some wonderful poets.

Still, it’s hard not to have some yearnings for home when exciting things are happened there too.

First up, today saw the T S Eliot shortlist emerge (via Bookseller):

• Seeing Stars Simon Armitage (Faber)

• The Mirabelles Annie Freud (Picador)

• You John Haynes (Seren)

• Human Chain Seamus Heaney (Faber)

• What the Water Gave Me Pascale Petit (Seren)

• The Wrecking Light Robin Robertson (Picador)

• Rough Music Fiona Sampson (Carcanet)

• Phantom Noise Brian Turner (Bloodaxe)

• White Egrets Derek Walcott (Faber)

• New Light for the Old Dark Sam Willetts (Jonathan Cape)

Last year I tried to make it my mission to read everything on the TS Eliot shortlist, and failed miserably. Still, I’ll give it a go.

Back in Edinburgh, there are some pretty exciting things afoot, too. Hidden Door Fest 2 occurred this weekend– with some excellent readers including Ryan Van Winkle, Kona MacPhee, Dave Coates and Andrew Philip. But it’s pointless looking to the past, right?

Well, if you are lucky enough to be in Edinburgh, get ready for the launch of Ryan Van Winkle’s debut collection Tomorrow, We Will Live Here. It launches in Blackwells on South Bridge November 18th. (I’ve had a sneak peek of the book and it is excellent). If you can’t make it, well that sucks for you (and I feel your pain) but Ryan will be hanging out here, in the virtual sense, to talk about the collection soon.

Also, if you’re feeling productive, why not get involved at Forest Publications? Those fine purveyors of the Golden Hour and other literary delights are looking for submissions for 2 upcoming anthologies. The first This Next One Goes Out Too… plans to examine the relationship between literature and music, but get on it because the deadline is 30th October.

The other anthology’s submission deadline is November 15th– ever written anything filthy? I should hope so, and so do Forest Publications. The first installment of ‘Bedtime Stories’ was smutty, sexy and sold out within 2 months. So we’re onto the Second Coming. (Seriously, that’s the title, I can’t take credit for such a pun). Find all the sordid details here.

This is a reminder that the deadline for the 2010 Lois Cranston Memorial Poetry Prize is coming up on May 31.  Here’s some reasons why you should submit to the contest:

1. Everyone who enters the contest gets a free journal

2. Your chance to win $300 and get published

3. You can be a part of a well-known literary journal that has been publishing feminist art and literature for 34 years

4. You’ll make assistant editor Becky very happy!

5. Who doesn’t like getting and sending letters?

6. Contests: just plain fun. 

Send your 3 best poems to CALYX, PO Box B, Corvallis, OR, 97333 with the reading fee of $15 enclosed. Your money goes to making sure your submissions are read carefully (by our lovely editorial board of 5 readers, and our final judge Fran P. Adler).  You also get to support CALYX!

This includes the opportunity to be published in a new anthology of poetry and also the opportunity for two new or emerging writers to have a collection of their work published by Picaro Press. Both the anthology and the individual collections will be launched at the 2010 Byron Bay Writers Festival and travel and accommodation expenses will be included for the two poets who will have their collections published.

Applications are now being accepted and close on Friday April 30. For full details visit the Varuna Writers’ House website.

Reason-Brisbane Poetry Prize

This is the competition’s seventh year and in 2010 it is open to budding and established writers across Australia. Open theme. Prizes: 1st $1500, 2nd $500, 3rd $300. Ross Gillett, multi-award winning poet, will judge the entries and winners will be announced at the morning poetry event of Words in Winter, Daylesford on 14 August. For guidelines, see <www.daylesfordonline.com/poetryprize> or send a SSAE to Rules, PO Box 545, Daylesford, VIC 3460.

Closing Date: July 2

Best Australian Poems 2010

Submissions are now being accepted for Black Inc.’s, The Best Australian Poems 2010, edited by Robert Adamson. The 2009 anthology was stunning so this is well worth checking out. Full submission details are available here: http://www.bestaustralianwriting.com.au/2010_submissions.pdf  

Going Down Swinging

Submissions for the 30th anniversary issue of Going Down Swinging close at the end of the month. So to be part of one of the coolest lit journals on the planet visit: http://goingdownswinging.org.au/

May your words all find good homes…

The Walt Whitman Award brings first-book publication, a cash prize of $5000, and a one-month residency at the Vermont Studio Center, to an American who has never before published a book of poetry.  The winning manuscript, chosen by an eminent poet, is published by Louisiana State University Press.

The Academy of American Poets puchases copies of the book for distribution to its members.

The award was established in 1975 to encourage the work of emerging poets and to enable the publication of a poet’s first book. 

This year’s deadline has been extended to December 1st, 2009.  An entry form and fee are required.

http://www.poets.org/page.php/prmID/121

The judge for the 2010 entry is poet Marvin Bell.

Check this out, if not for this year, then for other years.  And http://www.poets.org is a place to learn about (nearly) all things poetry.  Many awards and prizes are available, including translation, and college writing.

tutoring in Columbus OH:   Adrienne Edwards   614-579-6021   or email  aedwardstutor@columbus.rr.com .