Sherry Chandler

Deadline for the 2008 Merton Prize for Poetry of the Sacred is December 31, 2007. No fee. $500 first prize, $100 for three honorable mentions.

What is poetry of the sacred?

Poetry that expresses, directly or indirectly, a sense of the holy or that, by its mode of expression, evokes the sacred. The tone may be religious, prophetic, or contemplative.

Full guidelines and winning poems for the last 8 years at the link.

The Herald Sparrow is sponsoring a Significant Finds Contest to benefit New Southerner. The winner will receive $500.

A significant find is a natural object or an artifact not originally intended as art, found and considered to have aesthetic value. Some examples: A cool rock; the symbolism of an extension cord plugged into itself; milk jug rings found under the refrigerator; what Lincoln Logs reveal about life. (See www.heraldsparrow.com for more examples.) According to Herald Sparrow editor Fred Miller, “Significant finds are the kinds of discoveries that can change the way we see ourselves and the world we live in. Or, not. But they can still be fun.”

GUIDELINES:

Contest entries should include the following.

1. a headline
–there is a separate prize of $50.00 for the best headline.

2. a find
–images are not required and finds may be entirely conceptual. An image can be included but photographic images of persons will not be considered in support of any contest entry.

3. a brief report about the significance of the find, any theories, speculation, and maybe the usual calls for further study.

4. Entry fee of $10.00.

DEADLINE: October 1. Awards will be announced in November and in the winter issue of New Southerner.

HOW TO ENTER:
Send your entry by mail, with checks made out to Swallowtail Press, to:

Herald Sparrow
Box 4006
Louisville, KY 40204

Send your entry by e-mail (you will be prompted to pay your entry fee electronically via a secure Paypal link) to:
sparrowentries@newsoutherner.com

HOW TO WIN:
There are no rules, but keep it clean. The dumbest thing you can think of has about as good a chance as the most brilliant, so don’t try too hard. Show or tell something you’ve noticed and what you guess it means.

JUDGES:

* Fairleigh Brooks, the first Kentuckian to win the New Yorker Cartoon Caption Contest, and author of Notes Of A Would-Be Astronaut
* Chuck Swanson of Swanson Reed Gallery and Swanson Reed Contemporary
* Lynn Winter of Lynn’s Paradise Café

QUESTIONS: editor@heraldsparrow.com.

I’m pretty sure I have some readers who have the humor to do well in this contest. It’s in a good cause. The New Southerner, the mainstream magazine of alternative thinking, is a wonderful undertaking that’s been going for about two years now. They’ve been known to publish work by yours truly.

Poets for Human Rights announces the 2007 Anita McAndrews Award poetry contest (First prize - $100) and the 2007 Alexander Popoff Youth Award poetry contests (First prize for US - $100; First Prize for outside US - $100).

Sally Buckner, of Cary, North Carolina, was the winner of the 2006 Anita McAndrews Award, for her poem Human Rites, chosen from over 100 submissions.

The 2006 Alexander Popoff Youth Award was awarded to Kiran Rao, a high school student in Jakarta, Indonesia.

Submission guidelines for the 2007 Anita McAndrews Award:

1. Poems must relate to Human Rights
2. Poems must be typed and are limited to one page (8 ½ x 11).
3. Send two copies. One copy must include name, address, telephone number and email address. One copy must be anonymous.
4. Mail poems, cover sheet and $1 reading fee per poem to:

Anita McAdrews Award
c/o Stazja McFadyen
100 Waverly Way, #310
Clearwater, Florida 33756

5. Poems and cover sheet can be emailed to stazja@yahoo.com.
6. Reading fee payment must by mailed to the address given above.
7. Checks for reading fees must be made payable to Artists in Action International.
8. Deadline for submissions is November 15, 2007.

Submission guidelines for the 2007 Alexander Popoff Youth Award:

1. Poems must relate to one or more of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights articles. Summary of the 30 articles and video public service announcements for each article can be viewed at www.youthforhumanrights.org/introduction/udhr_abridged.html
2. Length of each poem is limited to one page (8 ½ x 11).
3. Poem(s) must be accompanied by a cover sheet with the poem title(s), name, address, telephone number, email, age, school name and grade.
4. Submissions can be mailed to:

Alexander Popoff Youth Award
c/o Stazja McFadyen
100 Waverly Way, #310
Clearwater, Florida 33756

or can be emailed to: stazja@yahoo.com
5. Teachers submitting entries on behalf of their students should include their own name, contact information, and name and address of their school.
6. Deadline for submissions is November 15, 2007.

Winners will be announced at the Poets for Human Rights 2007 International Human Rights Day event on December 10, 2007. The winning poems for each contest will be read at the event.

Winning poems and honorable mentions will be published online at the Poets for Human Rights website at www.poetsforhumanrights.org. and in the Map of Austin Poetry featured poetry supplement, archived at groups.yahoo.com/group/mapofaustinpoetry.

Poets for Human Rights was co-founded in 2005 by Larry Jaffe and Stazja McFadyen, who recognize that it is the nature of poets to lead the way for humanity. There are nearly 200 members internationally.

Just a reminder, tomorrow is postmark deadline for the Kentucky State Poetry Society contest 2007. Guidelines here.

Registration is now open for the 28th Kentucky Women Writers Conference. Mark your calendars for September 28th & 29th. Guidelines for the Betty Gabehart Prizes can be found here. Postmark deadline is August 15, fee for poetry is $5/per poem.

The Conference has a new director, Julie Kuzneski Wrinn, whose statement you will find here:

I became director of the conference in January 2007 after serving for three years on its volunteer board. My background is in book publishing. During a decade in that business in Washington, D.C., I had the privilege of editing some of Kentucky’s most beloved authors—Wendell Berry, Ed McClanahan, and the late Guy Davenport. Arriving in Lexington in 2002 already knowing these eminent Kentuckians was a happy coincidence for me. And after these five years of residing in the Bluegrass, I better understand the rich sense of place that inspires its many artists.

I’ve been a little distracted from the blog the last day or two. It’s almost a comfort to discover that, after all, I have a life.

Stick with me. I’ll be back in full fettle in a day or two.

Postmark deadline for entries in the annual Kentucky State Poetry Society Contest is June 30.

This year the society is offering prizes in 25 categories, including the Grand Prix ($200) and the President’s Prize ($100). The endowed Chaffin/Kash award ($100) is for members only but the society welcomes new members and you can send your dues along with your contest entries.

Membership information is available here.

Prizes are awarded at the annual KSPS Awards Weekend, October 12-14, at the Blue Licks Battlefield State Resort Park. First prize winners are published in Pegasus.

You can read Andrea O’Brien’s 2006 Grand Prix winning poem, Highway 60, Passing Through Versailles, Kentucky at the link.

Complete guidelines are downloadable as a PDF file on the KSPS website or contact Contest Chair Mick Kennedy .

Last Friday, taking youse guys on A Tour of My Blogroll, I featured Sandra Beasley’s reflections on this year’s Poetry Out Loud national finals and smiled a bit at the notion of a Kentucky boy from rural Trimble County taking a stab at Langston Hughes’s “Weary Blues,” a poem from both a time and place very alien to him.

Looks like I get to smile out of the other side of my mouth now. Dean Muir’s performance was good enough to get him into those national finals. Only twelve finalists were chosen.

So Dean did all right for himself and more power to him!

He’s pictured here performing at the Kentucky Writers’ Day Celebration.

Meanwhile, taking some umbrage at my statement that Poetry Out Loud may be more performance than poetry, a correspondent has written to chide me gently thus:

…a good “theater” (or speech team) coach would be emphasizing the student’s understanding of the poem. It is what makes the difference between “acting at acting” and truly “interpreting.”

The Carnegie Center’s Next Great Writers Competition

• Writers should submit manuscripts of fiction or nonfiction prose (up to 12 double-spaced pages) or poetry (up to 5 poems).
• THERE IS A $10 ENTRY FEE, payable to the Carnegie Center.
• Entries should include a cover sheet complete with writer’s name, address, email address, and phone number.
• Names should NOT appear anywhere on the manuscript itself
• Deadline for submissions is MONDAY, APRIL 30. Entries must be postmarked or received by that date.
• Winning authors and those selected to read will be notified by JUNE 1.
• The Carnegie Center’s NEXT GREAT WRITERS READING will take place Friday, June 15 at 7: 00 pm.
• The CASH PRIZE is $100 for First Place and $50 for Second.
• Up to 12 writers will be invited to read on June 15.

Send Entries to:
The Next Great Writers Competition
The Carnegie Center for Literacy and Learning
251 West Second Street
Lexington, KY 40507

The Next Great Writers Competition and Reading will culminate the 2006-2007 New Books by Great Writers Literary Series, which is made possible by generous grants from the Kentucky Arts Council and the Knight Advisory Fund at Blue Grass Community Foundation. Be sure to mark your calendar for the remaining events in the series:

Mick Kennedy, editor of The Heartland Review, has announced the winners and finalists for the 2007 Joy Bale Boone prize. Winners will read, with contest judge Frederick Smock, on April 19, 7 - 8 p.m., in the Morrison Gallery of Elizabethtown Community and Technical College.

1st Place—“The Year of Eating Oatmeal” Bonnie Naradzy, Silver Spring, MD

2nd Place—“Villanelle” Tammy Ramsey, Frankfort, KY

3rd Place—“To My Older Son, Soon to Marry” Larry Pike, Glasgow, KY

“In memory of Flight 5191” & “Spring Morning” David Cazden, Lexington, KY

“Afternoon Apology” & “Sitting the Watch” Tammy Ramsey, Frankfort, KY

“A House Two Cars and a Boat” & “Aubade” Naomi Clewett, Lexington, KY

“Black Mountain” & “When We Were Young” Kate Buckley, Lagun, CA

“After the telling” Willow Hambrick, Georgetown, KY

“The Desert” April White, Radcliff, KY

“Taking Off Billy Collins’ Clothes” Pam Steele, Hermiston, OR

“The Juniper Tree” Nettie Farris, Louisville, KY

“Picking Blackberries” JC Todd Harrisburg, PA

“The Ears of My Toes” Gregorio Ames Shonto, AZ

“Among Thorns” Therese Broderick Albany, NY

“Sonatina for a New Year’s Day” Buzz Mauro Annapolis, MD

“Parting Pear” Barbara Schweitzer, N. Smithfield, RI

FRANKFORT, KY — Dean Muir came out on top after competing against 15 other students from across the Commonwealth at the Kentucky State Finals Poetry Out Loud poetry recitation contest sponsored by the Kentucky Arts Council at Kentucky State University on March 13, 2007. The Kentucky Poetry Out Loud initiative is part of the national competition presented by the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) and the Poetry Foundation.

Muir’s innovative recitations of “The Weary Blues” by Langston Hughes and “Preludes” by T. S. Elliot won him an all expenses paid trip to Washington, D.C. to compete in the national finals on April 30th and May 1st in the Lisner Auditorium at George Washington University, a $200 cash prize, a trip for his chaperone and $500 to his school library, Trimble County High School, for the purchase of poetry. The national winner will receive $20,000 of the $50,000 in scholarship funds being awarded by the National Endowment for the Arts at the Poetry Out Loud National Recitation Contest.

Erica Martin from Ohio County High School was the state runner-up with her moving recitations of “Revenge” by Leticia Elizabeth Landon and “Broken Promises” by David Kirby. She won a cash prize of $100 and Ohio County High School received $200 for the purchase of poetry for their library.

Muir and Martin have also been invited back to Frankfort to recite their poems and be honored at the Kentucky Writers’ Day Celebration presented by the Kentucky Arts Council on April 24, 2007 in the Capitol Rotunda. Also, Kentucky’s newly appointed Poet Laureate for 2007-2008 will be officially inducted during the celebration.

Judges for the Kentucky State Finals of the National Poetry Out Loud Recitation Contest were Kentucky Poet Laureate Emeritus Richard Taylor; Crystal Wilkinson, writer and Affrilachian Poet and Sarah Gorham, poet and publisher.

I am proud to announce that my daughter-in-law, Isabel Pelech, has been nominated for the 2007 Rhysling Award from the Science Fiction Poetry Association. The SFPA has awarded Rhyslings, named for the blind poet Rhysling in Robert Heinlein’s “The Green Hills of Earth,” since 1978. Previous winners have included Ursula K. Le Guin and Thomas M. Disch. You can find a complete list of winners at the link.

Isabel was nominated for her prose poem “Clock Function,” which originally appeared in Dreams and Nightmares. “Clock Function” will be reprinted in the 2007 Rhysling Anthology:

The nominees for each year’s Rhysling Awards are selected by the membership of the Science Fiction Poetry Association. Each member is allowed to nominate one work in each of the two categories: “Best Long Poem” (50+ lines) and “Best Short Poem” (0-49 lines). All nominated works must have been published during the calendar year for which the present awards are being given. The Rhysling Awards are put to a final vote by the membership of the SFPA using reprints of all the nominated works presented in this voting tool called The Rhysling Anthology. The anthology allows the membership to easily review and consider all nominated works without the necessity of obtaining the diverse number of publications in which the nominated works first appeared. The Rhysling Anthology is also made available to anyone with an interest in this unique compilation of verse from some of the finest poets working in the field of SF/F/Horror poetry.

The winning works are regularly reprinted in the Nebula Awards Anthology from the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, Inc., and are considered in the SF/F/H/Spec. field to be the equivalent in poetry of the awards given for “prose” work–achievement awards given to poets by the writing peers of their own field of literature.