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Award-Winning Poems: Summer 2017
Welcome to my summer selection
of award-winning poems, highlights from our contest archives, and the
best new resources we've found for writers. These quarterly specials
are included with your free Winning Writers Newsletter subscription.
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SONNET WITH A
WISHBONE IN THE THROAT
by Kara van de Graaf
Winner of the 2016 Crab
Orchard Series in Poetry First Book Award
Entries must be received by July 8
This prestigious contest from Southern Illinois University Carbondale
gives $2,500 and publication. Van de Graaf's Spitting
Image was the most recent winner. In this brief but complex
poem, the "clean, pliable" trussed hen contains a sharp surprise,
not unlike the woman who struggles with the double bind of wanting to
be both enticing and emotionally authentic.
HOW TO LET
ATHENS BURN
by Sarah Stickney
Winner of the 2016 Emrys
Press Chapbook Prize
Entries must be received by July 15
Launched in 2016, this contest for a poetry chapbook manuscript gives
$1,000, publication, and a one-week residency at the Rensing Center in
South Carolina. Stickney's Portico was the inaugural
winner. "Be ready to leave," she advises in this severe but
ultimately hopeful poem about the price we pay for transformation.
LIFE SENTENCES:
SONNET FOR THE GODDESS (TIANANMEN SQUARE, JUNE 1989)
by Henry Wei Leung
Winner of the 2016 Omnidawn
First/Second Poetry Book Contest
Entries must be received by July 17
This $3,000 prize includes publication by Omnidawn, a well-regarded
independent press with an interest in experimental and politically
relevant writing. Leung's winning collection Goddess
of Democracy is forthcoming in October 2017. Written in 14
fragmented sentences or interrupted prose poems, this poem interrogates
the paradoxes of broken ideals, freedom and exile, and loving your
country enough to defy its leaders.
THE CANYON
by Candace Black
Winner of the 2016 Violet
Reed Haas Prize
Entries must be received by August 31
This open poetry manuscript contest awards $1,000 and publication by
Snake Nation Press, a well-established small literary press in Georgia.
Black's Whereabouts
was the most recent winner. In this Southwestern pastoral, the history
and implements of warfare can remain on the margins (for now) of a
child's exploration of her native landscape, though their shadow
intrudes into the adult's memories.
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Deadline: July 15
The annual Rattle
Poetry Prize is once again offering $10,000 for a single
poem to be published in the winter issue of the magazine. Ten finalists
will also receive $200 each and publication, and be eligible for the
$2,000 Readers' Choice Award, to be selected by subscriber and entrant vote.
With the winners judged in a
blind review by the editors to ensure a fair and consistent selection,
an entry fee that is simply a one-year subscription to the magazine—and
a runner-up Readers' Choice Award to be chosen by the writers
themselves—the Rattle Poetry Prize aims to be one of the most
writer-friendly and popular poetry contests around.
We accept entries online and by
mail. See www.rattle.com
for the complete guidelines and to read all of the past winners.
Enjoy "Veins"
by Julie Price Pinkerton, winner of the 2016 Rattle Poetry Prize:
During my annual physical, I
tell my doctor that I'm starting to gross out
over how bulgy the veins on my hands are getting. Look at them, I say,
they're like lounging blue sea worms.
[continue]
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This
Supportive and Inspiring 4-Week Online Poetry Retreat was created by
poets for poets.
WHAT YOU
NEED: Access to email and a desire
to write new poems.
WHAT WE
PROVIDE: Poem prompts, sample poems, a
Two Sylvias Press publication (your choice), a softcover journal
created specifically for retreat participants, creativity suggestions,
and reflection questions/activities to guide and inspire. All prompts,
writing exercises, and inspiration sent daily or weekly to your email
(your choice!)
AND at the end of the retreat,
the editors at Two Sylvias Press also critique two of your poems and
offer ideas on where to submit them!
Space is
Limited.
All levels of
poet welcome (from beginning to published author)
Supportive, nurturing, and helpful feedback to sustain your creativity
and your journey as a poet.
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This extraordinary set of
autobiographical essays gives insight into a black woman's life in the
arts: everything from joining the Black Panthers to avoiding
African-American chick lit.
Juanita (Virgin
Soul, 2013) grew up in Oakland, California, in the 1950s.
She remembers a "goody-goody" childhood of reading, spelling
bees, and chores. America at the time was "a Jell-O & white
bread land of perfection and gleaming surfaces," she notes in her
essay "White Out"; the only blacks on screen played mammies
and maids. She joined the Black Panthers at San Francisco State in 1966
and became a junior faculty member in its Black Studies department—the
nation's first. In perhaps the most powerful piece in the collection,
"The Gun as Ultimate Performance Poem", written after the
death of Trayvon Martin, Juanita sensitively discusses the split in the
Black Panthers over carrying guns. She liked guns' symbolic
associations and even kept one in her purse while working at a post
office. But she now recognizes the disastrous consequences of
romanticizing a weapon: "It was Art. It was Metaphor. It was
loaded with meaning and death." In another standout, "The
N-word", she boldly explores the disparate contexts in which the
epithet appears: in August Wilson's play Fences, in
comedy routines, and intimately between friends. "It's not problem
or solution; it's an indication," she concludes. The title essay
contends that black women are de facto feminists because they're so
often reduced to single parenting in poverty. Elsewhere, she discusses
relationships between black men and women, recalls rediscovering poetry
as a divorcée with an 8-year-old son in New Jersey ("Tough
Luck", which includes her own poems), remembers a time spent
cleaning condos, and remarks that Terry McMillan has ensured that a
"black female writer not writing chick lit has an uphill
challenge."
The author refers to herself as
"an observational ironist," and her incisive comments on
black life's contradictions make this essay collection a winner.
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Dwarves and golems, Fates and
minotaurs, metamorphoses, murder, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. L.S.
Johnson delivers a provocative and original short story collection that
ingeniously blends myth and nightmare. Whether it concerns the efforts
of an infertile witch to construct a golem-baby, or a daughter's quest
to understand a father's guilt and a mother's supernatural
infidelities, or a woman's violent association with a group of possibly
imaginary but nonetheless dangerous little men, each story in this
remarkable collection demonstrates the limitless capacity of
intelligent speculative fiction to enthrall, inspire, and amaze. Available
now at Amazon,
Kobo,
Barnes
& Noble, and iBooks.
Read a
free excerpt.
"I can say without
hesitation, reservation or exception that this is a collection full of
brilliantly written and powerfully affecting stories, each of which
profoundly impressed me in different ways ... Johnson's Vacui
Magia is a book that never goes quietly, and it is
wonderful for it." – The Future Fire Reviews
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To slack:
1. to make loose, or less tense or taut, as a rope; loosen.
2. to become less tense or taut, as a rope; to ease off.
Ambition:
1. an earnest desire for some type of achievement or distinction, as
power, honor, fame, or wealth, and the willingness to strive for its
attainment.
A slacker:
1. a person without ambition.
2. a person who gives up the idea of ambition in order to become less
tense or taut, and to make the world less tense.
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Just released! Book Four in the series. A cold case heats
up...
A dead man in Big Bay Creek,
spring break, and a rogue FBI agent would be enough to drive Chief
Callie Jean Morgan to drink...if she hadn't already quietly crawled
inside a bottle of gin to drown her sorrows over a life ripped apart by
too many losses. When her investigation into the stranger's death heats
up an unsolved abduction case, Callie finds herself pitted against the
town council, her son, the agent, and even the raucous college kids
enjoying idyllic Edisto Beach. Amidst it all, Callie must find a way to
reconcile her grief and her precious taste for booze before anyone else
is killed.
"Hope Clark has created
another fascinating heroine in former Boston PD detective Callie
Morgan. Her books are fast-paced mysteries set against the backdrop of
a tiny South Carolina island where murder never happens—or so the
locals would like to believe. I'm happy to recommend it." - Kathryn R. Wall,
author, the Bay Tanner mysteries
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Two Natures offers a backstage look at the glamour and tragedy
of 1990s New York City through the eyes of Julian Selkirk, an aspiring
fashion photographer. Coming of age during the height of the AIDS
epidemic, Julian worships beauty and romance, however fleeting, as substitutes
for the religion that rejected him. His spiritual crisis is one that
too many gay youth still face today.
I'm a control freak. I have
this fantasy that if I game out every possibility before writing a
scene, I'll never reach that dreaded moment when I realize the story
has gone in the wrong direction. This. Doesn't. Work.
Did you grow up in a family or
peer group where you were humiliated for making mistakes while
learning? Those bullies are never going to see your tossed-out first
drafts.
I learned from writing Two
Natures that there's no substitute for running the
experiment in real time—let my characters try the action and see if
it's really plausible from their point of view. When the self-doubt
gremlins won't leave my head without a fight, I listen to The Eagles:
"Maybe someday you will find/That it wasn't really wasted
time."
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Here are some of our favorite
newly added resources at Winning Writers. For a full list, see our Resource
pages.
BookFunnel
Platform for distributing review copies in multiple e-reader
formats
GoStartABlog
User-friendly guide to setting up a WordPress blog
Kartika
Review
Online literary journal for Asian Pacific Islander American
perspectives
TrailerShelf
Curated, genre-sorted archive of book trailers helps boost publicity
for your new books
Writer
Advice
Writers' resource site hosts contests with modest prizes
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Linda
McCullough Moore
AN
EPISODE OF GRACE
Grace abounds, though sentimentality may be skewered, in these
sparkling stories about women taking stock of their flawed
relationships with husbands and families—and often finding a surprising
bit of information that shifts their longstanding narrative of
their lives. A self-lacerating quip or satirical observation of human
nature will be followed by a moment of raw loneliness or
unexpected kindness that turns the reader's laughter to tears and back
again.
Jamaal May
THE BIG
BOOK OF EXIT STRATEGIES
The award-winning poet's second collection from Alice James Books
explores bereavement, masculinity, risk, tenderness, gun violence, and
the unacknowledged vitality of his beloved Detroit, in verse that is
both muscular and musical. Nominated for the 2017 NAACP Image
Awards for Outstanding Literary Work in Poetry.
Gail Thomas
ODD
MERCY
This elegantly crafted, life-affirming chapbook won the 2016 Charlotte
Muse Prize from Headmistress Press, a lesbian-feminist poetry
publisher. Thomas' verse knits together several generations of women,
from her once prim and proper suburban mother descending into
Alzheimer's, to her young granddaughter surrounded by gender-bending
friends and same-sex couples. She grounds their history in earthy
details like the taste of asparagus, locks of hair from the dead, and
old newspaper clippings of buildings raised and gardens planted by
blue-collar forebears. The centerpiece of the collection, "The
Little Mommy Sonnets", poignantly depicts a sort of
reconciliation at the end of a thorny relationship, where differences
in ideals of womanhood fall away, and what's left is the primal comfort
of touching and feeding a loved one.
Patrick T.
Reardon
REQUIEM
FOR DAVID
Plain-spoken and poignant, this memoir in verse pays tribute to a
brother who committed suicide, and ponders the unanswerable question of
why some survive a loveless upbringing and others succumb.
Pat and David were the eldest of 14 children born in the 1950s-60s to
an Irish-Catholic family in Chicago. Immersion in the
church trained the author to search for sacred beauty in
times of suffering and mystery, yet the weight of parental and
religious judgments overwhelmed his brother. The collection is
illustrated with archival family photos that prompt the poet's
hindsight search for clues to their fate.
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"Weather
Report"
by Guy Kettelhack
First Prize
2004 Margaret Reid Poetry Contest for Traditional Verse
"The
Wizard"
by Gordon Phipps
Second Prize
2003 Tom Howard/John H. Reid Fiction & Essay Contest
"Collection"
by Marianne Sciucco
Honorable Mention
2007 Tom Howard/John H. Reid Fiction & Essay Contest
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ProLiteracy,
the largest adult literacy and basic education membership organization
in the nation, believes that a safer, stronger, and more sustainable
society starts with an educated population. For more than 60 years,
ProLiteracy has been working across the globe to create a world where
every person can read and write. Learn
more.
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Advertisers: We send this
newsletter to over 50,000 subscribers. Ads are just $150 each. On a
tight budget? Pressed for time? Advertise to our 90,000 Twitter
followers for just $40 per tweet or less.
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Julian
Peters kindly shares with us this white-gouache-on-black-paper
sketch inspired by "Shiudiao Getou", a famous poem by the
11th-century Chinese poet Su Shi (or Su Tungpo).
This drawing illustrates the
last line of the poem: "Though thousands of miles apart, we are
still able to share the beauty of the moon together." The
translation of the poem is found on Wikipedia.
Thinking of you
Mid-autumn of the Bing Chen year
Having been drinking happily over night
I'm drunk
So I write this poem
Remembering my brother, Zi You
When will the moon be clear and bright?
With a cup of wine in my hand, I ask the clear sky.
In the heavens on this night,
I wonder what season it would be?
I'd like to ride the wind to fly home.
Yet I fear the crystal and jade mansions
are much too high and cold for me.
Dancing with my moonlit shadow,
It does not seem like the human world.
The moon rounds the red mansion,
Stoops to silk-pad doors,
Shines upon the sleepless,
Bearing no grudge,
Why does the moon tend to be full when people are apart?
People experience sorrow, joy, separation and reunion,
The moon may be dim or bright, round or crescent shaped,
This imperfection has been going on since the beginning of time.
May we all be blessed with longevity,
Though thousands of miles apart, we are still able to share the beauty
of the moon together.
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