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Award-Winning Poems: Winter 2017-2018
Welcome to my winter 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.
In this issue: "Soir d'hiver" by Émile
Nelligan, illustrated and translated by Julian Peters.
—Jendi Reiter, Editor
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EXCERPT FROM ME
DRAWING A PICTURE OF ME(N)
by Rachelle Escamilla
Winner of the 2014 Willow
Books Literature Award for Poetry
Entries must be received by December 15
This biennial award series gives $1,000 and publication for poetry and
prose manuscripts by writers of color. Escamilla describes her winning
collection, Imaginary Animal, as being "about race, labor
and assimilation filtered through found text and re-appropriation of
language generated from specific Google searches." This playful
erotic poem, at times Whitman-esque in its mode of address, is a
collage of moments with men from Craigslist and reminiscences of
Pittsburgh streets that the narrator will soon leave far behind.
LAPIDARY
by Nancy Chen Long
Winner of the 2016 Tampa
Review Prize for Poetry
Postmark Deadline: December 31
This notable competition gives $2,000 and publication by the University
of Tampa Press for a full-length poetry manuscript. Long's prizewinning
collection was Light into
Bodies. Using the metaphor of a rock collector, this
measured poem cautions that hardness and perfection are no guarantees
of security.
SELECTIONS FROM
INSTEAD OF DYING
by Lauren Haldeman
Winner of the 2017 Colorado
Prize for Poetry
Postmark Deadline: January 14
The Center for Literary Publishing at the University of Colorado offers
this prestigious award of $2,000 and publication. In this excerpt from
Haldeman's prizewinning collection Instead of Dying, efforts to
heal the "you" addressed by the poem take on a surreal cast,
suggesting a wish-fulfillment dream rather than an actual possibility
of remission.
GOAT HOUR
GOSPEL (SUCH SALVAGE)
by Mark Wagenaar
Winner of the 2016 Benjamin
Saltman Poetry Award
Entries must be received by January 31
This long-running award for a full-length collection gives $3,000 and
publication by Red Hen Press, a well-regarded independent publisher.
Wagenaar's winning collection, Southern Tongues Leave Us Shining,
will be published in 2018. In this meditative poem, first published in
The New Yorker, the goats' indiscriminate appetite appears as a kind of
mercy that salvages the debris of our imperfect lives.
FAMILY FARM
by Peter Mishler
Winner of the 2016 Kathryn
A. Morton Poetry Award
Postmark Deadline: March 15 (don't enter before January 1)
Sarabande Books, a prestigious literary press in Kentucky, gives $2,000
and publication for a full-length poetry collection. Mishler's Fludde
was the 2016 prizewinner. The mood of this poem is anything but bucolic,
though its setting is the stuff of American heartland nostalgia. The
speaker seems about to undergo a fatal transformation into an alien
mechanical thing, not unlike the agribusiness machinery that has
crushed his way of life.
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You won't be able to quit work
and write, but you might find a grant to make your writing goals
easier. Or a crowdfunding opportunity to fund your project. Find
serious contests, too. Only those that pay in cold hard cash. No
pay-per-click, $1 per blog or exposure markets either. Hope Clark writes
for a living. If she wouldn't try these opportunities, she doesn't post
them. Our newsletters are our world. Free or paid subscription.
Free
FundsforWriters
Our most popular free newsletter. FundsforWriters provides markets that
pay $200 or 10 cents/word and up. Expect 15 or more paying
opportunities in the form of contests, grants, freelance markets, jobs,
and publishers/agents. Delivered each weekend via Aweber.com. The newsletter
also provides an editorial from editor Hope Clark and a freelance piece
from a guest author. FundsforWriters is also a paying market. If you
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guidelines. Subscribe.
View
archive.
Total
FundsforWriters
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December
Special - A Free Gift for Yourself or a Friend!
Buy a new or renewal subscription to Total FundsforWriters in December,
and receive a free book by Hope Clark.
Visit Hope's
website to browse the selection: The Shy Writer Reborn,
The Best of FundsforWriters, Vol 1., the Carolina
Slade Mysteries, and the Edisto Island Mysteries. After you subscribe
to Total, email
Hope with how you'd like her to autograph your book (if it's
print) and where she should send it.
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Deadline: January 15, 2018
The annual Rattle
Chapbook Prize gives poets something truly special. Every
year, at least one winner will receive: $2,000 cash, 500 contributor
copies, and distribution to Rattle's 7,000+ subscribers. In
a world where a successful full-length poetry book might sell 1,000
copies, the winning book will reach an audience seven times as large on
its release day alone—an audience that includes many other literary
magazines, presses, and well-known poets. This will be a chapbook to
launch a career.
And maybe the best part is
this: The $20 entry fee is just a standard subscription to Rattle,
which includes four issues of the magazine and the winning chapbook,
even if it isn't yours. Rattle is one of the most-read literary
journals in the world—find out why just by entering! For more
information and to read portions of last year's winning entry, The Whetting
Stone by Taylor Mali, visit our
website.
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Deadline: January 31, 2018
Sponsored by Cogswell
College. Submit a set of 1-6 poems. The winner will receive:
·
Publication online and in the
print issue of COG, as well as a $1,000 prize
·
Your poem(s) adapted
as an animated short film, 2D animation, graphic book/ebook,
or series of interpretive illustrations by students in Cogswell's
celebrated Digital Art & Animation Program and Digital Audio
Technology Program
The adaptation of 2016-17's
winning poem by Megan Merchant will be published online shortly.
Meanwhile, please enjoy this animation
made from "The
Last Gun" by Anne Harding Woodworth, 2015-2016 COG
Poetry Awards winner:
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Postmark Deadline: January 31,
2018
Prize: $500, publication of chapbook and 50 gorgeous copies
Reading fee: $20
Submit: 16-32 pages of poetry
Simultaneous submissions are
permissible if we are notified immediately upon acceptance elsewhere.
Multiple submissions are also permitted; a fee must accompany each
entry. Including acknowledgments of previously published poems is
acceptable but not required. When a manuscript is chosen for
publication, we will request acknowledgments.
Daniel
Donaghy, this year's judge, is the author of Streetfighting,
a Paterson Poetry Prize finalist. He is assistant professor of English
at Eastern Connecticut State University.
Please enjoy the title poem
from Halfway-Heaven
by James Crews, our 2017 chapbook winner.
Halfway-Heaven
Before he died, my father tried
to teach me
the only language of manhood he knew—
Phillips-head, needle-nose, catalytic converter—
but I left him hunched under hoods
or sprawled on cardboard pallets beneath
stalled cars, thinking the dust of books
and blue glow of computer screens
could keep me from work like that. I hated
his oil-stink, the orange goop he used
to clean grease-black hands, and those
homemade tattoos of lightning on his biceps.
I hated the cigarette dangling from his lips,
his eyes squinting against smoke snaking up
as he scraped a deer skull clean of meat
for mounting. But now, I want it all back.
I replay every scene in my mind as if
seeing my father again could keep him alive
and tinkering in some other realm, some
halfway-heaven he'd love because everything
needs fixing there. I think of the greenstriped
tube socks pulled to his knees when he
mowed the yard, the scratch of sandpaperstubble
against my cheek each time he
kissed me goodnight. I still hear the way
he'd say sorta speak when he meant so to
speak,
while explaining, for instance, why tomatoes
taste better with a kiss of salt: Brings out
the sweetness, sorta speak.
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Tupelo Press is eager to
celebrate a more complete version of the story we tell—about ourselves,
our past, and what is possible in language.
In this anthology of Indigenous
poetry, the first of its kind, we are proud to feature new work by Natalie
Diaz, Linda Hogan, Santee Frazier, Luci Tapahonso, Layli Long Soldier,
Ray Young Bear, Ishmael Hope, and more. Every poet will
present new poems, as well as an original essay, and a selection of
resonant work chosen from previous generations of Native artists. Pledge
your support today!
As Layli Long Soldier tells us,
"Everything is in the language we use." Among peoples whose
stories have been forcibly withheld, each poem contains a trace of that
erasure, a record of what is lost as well as made more whole.
Our anthology is intended to
embody the dynamic and ongoing conversations that take place in
Indigenous poetry through writerly craft across generational,
geographic, and stylistic divides. This anthology will showcase a broad
range of Indigenous writers working today and will offer an invitation
to enter the richness of their explorations as these continue to unfold
around us.
How You Can
Help
Join Tupelo Press in publishing
this necessary anthology of contemporary Indigenous writing. Your
contributions will be applied directly to the production costs for what
promises to be a stunningly made volume, one that celebrates the work
that appears in its pages through the beauty of its design, and even
more importantly, the care with which it is brought to life as a
printed book.
Donate any amount by December
13, 2017 and we will proudly post a public thank you
via social media. Other rewards include: letterpress
broadsides and bookmarks, Tupelo Press t-shirts, 2018 gift
subscriptions, poetry manuscript reviews from our editors, writer's
retreat weekends for two, and of course, copies of our beautiful
anthology!
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From the author of Uncle
Otto, winner of the 2016 North Street Book
Prize for literary fiction, comes a story of perilous love during
the conflagration of the Civil War. Kirkus
Reviews writes:
"Jerry Hawthorne and
Daniel Cook are an unlikely pair of lovers. They are both men, and in
19th-century America, theirs is a dangerous union. They share intense
memories of growing up together on the Hawthorne plantation, with
Daniel a slave and Jerry the scion of the family that owned him. When
they are still boys, Jerry’s father dies, throwing the future of the
plantation in doubt...
"...the leads are
compelling, and the investigation of interracial and homosexual
relationships in the Civil War period should keep audiences invested in
their struggles. The book is well-crafted and will likely please
readers beyond those who are fans of gay fiction."
An affecting story of two souls
separated by slavery and war.
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 Ellen
LaFleche, a judge of the North
Street Book Prize, explores the emotional life of a
semi-cloistered nun in this chapbook from Tiger's
Eye Press. Sister Beatrice serves on a jury, bakes bread in
the convent kitchen, scatters her mother's ashes in the ocean, and
reflects on her friendship with another nun. Order directly from Ms.
LaFleche for $10 at ElLaFleche@aol.com.
"The
tides of the sacred feminine seek an outlet in the cloistered body of
Sister Beatrice, a working-class mystic. The convent offers both refuge and confinement—the
paradox of a women-ruled society where women must de-sexualize
themselves. The ascetic environment cannot quench the vitality of
Beatrice's imagination, which finds golden-faced gods in copper pans
and lust's soft satisfaction in a raw quahog."
—Jendi Reiter, editor, Winning Writers, and author of Bullies
in Love
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Set in New York City in the
early 1990s, Two Natures (Saddle
Road Press) is the coming-of-age story of Julian Selkirk, a fashion
photographer who struggles to reconcile his Southern Baptist upbringing
with his love for other men.
Two Natures was recently named a finalist
for the American Book Fest Best Book Awards.
In a review
for A&U: America's AIDS Magazine, T.J. Banks writes: "Julian
Selkirk gets under our skin. Immediately… Reiter has created a funny,
astute, self-deprecating hero, and we care tremendously about what
happens to him."
Julian would like to tell our
newsletter subscribers: "December 1 is World AIDS Day. Please
support GMHC,
the world's first and leading provider of HIV/AIDS prevention, care and
advocacy!"
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Here are some of our favorite
newly added resources at Winning Writers. For a full list, see our Resource
pages.
Food
Timeline
Resources and free Q&A service about the history of food
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 Kaveh Akbar
Calling
a Wolf a Wolf
This fierce, dazzling debut poetry collection describes the difficult
path out of alcoholism and into the disciplined joy of being present in
the moment. Simultaneously self-lacerating and grandiose, the speaker
leaps from one aphoristic observation to another, through the ecstasies
of Islamic mysticism, his devouring relationships with lovers both male
and female, and self-annihilation as the ultimate extreme of pleasure.
Yet he discovers that sobriety has its own nearly unbearable intensity,
the rupture of his isolation by genuine connection with others.
Rene Denfeld
The
Child Finder
This beautifully written thriller goes deep into the minds of survivors
of intergenerational trauma: some who become healers and heroes, pitted
against others who pass on the evil that was done to them. In the
snowbound mountain forests of the Pacific Northwest, a famed
investigator with her own barely-remembered abuse history searches for
a little girl who was kidnapped three years ago. Meanwhile, this
resilient and imaginative child tries to maintain her sanity in
captivity, by reliving her favorite fairy tale and forming a
bittersweet survival bond with her captor.
em jollie
A Field
Guide to Falling
This poetry collection is like a stained-glass cathedral window: even
in scenes of suffering, the glorious colors give joy and uplift. Much
of the book processes the aftermath of breaking up with a beloved
woman, though at the end, the narrator seems to find a new beginning
with another partner and a greater sense of herself as complete and
sufficient. But this therapeutic summary can't do justice to the
mystical meaning of her journey. The speaker bravely walks up to the
edge of everything we consider permanent, looks into the clouds
swirling above the bottomless gulf, and finds a way to praise their
ever-changing shapes. These poems imply that the value of falling—in
love, out of love, out of Eden into a world of loss—is in how it
challenges us to keep our hearts open, to say Yes despite it all.
Ellaraine Lockie
Tripping
with the Top Down
Prolific poet Ellaraine Lockie has a gift for revealing the spirit of a
place with a perfectly chosen character sketch or a quirky interaction
that invites us to think twice about how we move through the world. In
her work, travel produces enlightening friction between an unfamiliar
environment and the unnoticed edges of ourselves. This collection, her
13th chapbook, takes us along on her tour of the American West, from
her Montana birthplace to her native California and points between.
Diane Lockward, ed.
The
Crafty Poet: A Portable Workshop
This anthology, suitable for both individual and classroom use,
features craft essays and exercises for poets of all skill levels. It
includes model poems and prompts, writing tips, and interviews
contributed by 56 well-known American poets, including 13 former and
current state Poets Laureate. Volume II is also available. Lockward is
the editor of Terrapin Books, an independent publisher of poetry
collections and anthologies.
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"Fragments
from Crete"
by Jacqueline Cooke
Third Prize
2006 Margaret Reid Poetry Contest for Traditional Verse
"The
Train to Harare"
by Lance Mason
Most Highly Commended
2010 Tom Howard/John H. Reid Fiction & Essay Contest
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ProLiteracy,
the largest 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 99,000 Twitter
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Julian Peters writes,
"These are possibly the most famous lines in the history of Quebec
poetry, from 'Soir d’hiver' (c.1898) by Émile Nelligan." Please
see the English translation below. Visit
the website of Julian Peters Comics.
Here is the complete poem,
translated by Julian Peters:
Winter Night
by Emile Nelligan
Oh! How the snow's been
snowing!
My window pane is a garden of frost.
Oh! How the snow's been snowing!
What's the spasm of living
Next to all the pain that I have, that I have!
All the ponds lie frozen
My soul is black: Where do I live? Where am I going?
All its hopes lie frozen:
I am the new Norway
From which the blonde skies have departed.
Weep, you February birds
At the sinister shivering of things,
Weep, you February birds,
Weep out my tears, weep out my roses,
Upon the branches of the juniper tree.
Oh! How the snow's been snowing!
My window pane is a garden of frost.
Oh! How the snow's been snowing!
What's the spasm of living
Next to all the ennui that I have, that I have!
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