Open to teens in grades 6 to 12, who are
residents of Essex County in Massachusetts.
Poem entries must be original work.
Maximum 3 poems per author may be entered.
THEME: Poem must incorporate theme:perfection (or have an associative "perfection" metaphor such as: whole, sublime, rareness, ideal, etc.). Judges will deduct points from poems that do not incorporate the theme.
Each poem must have a title.
All poems must be submitted by midnight onApril 30, 2017.
An online entry form must be filled out for EACH poem submitted.
Contest winners and honorable mentions will be announced at the
Poetry Reception on Thursday, May 11, 2017, 7:00 to 9:00 PM.
You must be present at the Reception to win.
You must be present at the Reception to win.
$ Cash prizes to be awarded $
All contest winners and honorable mentions are required to read or recite their poem aloud at the Reception. Your poem will be disqualified if you are not present at the reception. Please do not submit a poem if you will not be able to attend the reception. Winning poems will be published on the Poetry Page of this blog and in local newspaper(s).
The 2017 Poetry Contest Reception speaker will be Erica Funkhouser. Erica Funkhouser’s most recent book of poems, Earthly, was published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in 2008. Other Houghton Mifflin titles include Pursuit (2002), The Actual World (1997) and Sure Shot And Other Poems (1992). Natural Affinities was published by Alice James Books in 1983. Included in Sure Shot are three dramatic monologues in the voices of 19th century American women: Sacagawea, Louisa May Alcott, and Annie Oakley. The Oakley poem was adapted for the stage and produced by the Helicon Theatre Company in Los Angeles. Funkhouser’s work on Sacagawea led her to become involved with the production of Ken Burns’ PBS documentary on the Lewis and Clark Expedition, and her essay on Sacagawea appears in Ken Burns’ and Dayton Duncan’s Lewis and Clark(Knopf, 1997). “Singing in Dark Times,” an essay on war poetry, appeared in the Autumn 2005 issue of The Harvard Review, and a story, Snapper, appeared in The Massachusetts Review in 2006. Funkhouser’s poems have appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Ploughshares, The Paris Review, Poetry and other magazines; one of her poems has been sand-blasted into the wall of the Davis Square MBTA Station in Somerville, MA. Educated at Vassar College (BA) and Stanford University (MA), Funkhouser was honored as a Literary Light by The Boston Public Library in 2002 and in 2007 she received a Guggenheim Fellowship in Poetry. She lives in Essex, MA and teaches at MIT.
Link to Erica Funkhouser's books in our library catalog.
Link to Erica Funkhouser's books in our library catalog.