National Poetry Month: CONTEST!

April 28, 2018Leave a comment

With National Poetry Month drawing to a close in a few days and the turmoil going on in the world around us, I wanted to share with you this wonderful contest from the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, a non-profit, non-partisan 501(c)3 organization based in Santa Barbara, California.

Please note that I am not affiliated with the organization or poetry awards in any way. If you have questions about the contest, please direct them to the email address in the information below.

Good luck!

The 2018 Barbara Mandigo Kelly Peace Poetry Awards

The Barbara Mandigo Kelly Peace Poetry Awards is an annual series of awards to encourage poets to explore and illuminate positive visions of peace and the human spirit. The Poetry Awards include three age categories: Adult, Youth 13-18, and Youth 12 & Under. The deadline for entries is July 1, 2018.

The annual contest is open to people worldwide. Poems must be original, unpublished, and in English.

Deadline

All entries must be postmarked (or emailed) by July 1, 2018.

Awards

Adult Winner – $1,000
Youth (13 to 18) Winner – $200
Youth (12 and under) Winner – $200
We may award Honorable Mentions in each category.

Entry Fee

Adults – $15 for up to three poems
Youth (13 to 18) – $5
Youth (12 and under) – no fee
If submitting on paper, please make checks payable to Nuclear Age Peace Foundation. Cash and money order are also accepted.

Procedures (to submit online)

Any entry that does not adhere to ALL of the contest rules will not be considered for a prize.

Adults
1. You may submit up to three unpublished poems. Maximum of 30 lines per poem.
2. Include name, “adult category,” address, email and telephone number in upper right-hand corner of each poem.
3. Title each poem.
4. Email your poem(s) in a Microsoft Word attachment (.doc or .docx) to cwarner@napf.org.
5. Please keep copies of your Word files.
6. Click here to pay your $15 entry fee online.

Youth (Ages 13-18)
1. You may submit up to three unpublished poems. Maximum of 30 lines per poem.
2. Include name, age, address, email and telephone number in upper right-hand corner of each poem.
3. Title each poem.
4. Email your poem(s) in a Microsoft Word attachment (.doc or .docx) to cwarner@napf.org.
5. Please keep copies of your Word files.
6. Click here to pay your $5 entry fee online.

Youth (12 and Under)
1. You may submit up to three unpublished poems. Maximum of 30 lines per poem.
2. Include name, age, address, email, telephone number, school name and teacher’s name in upper right-hand corner of each poem.
3. Title each poem.
4. Email your poem(s) in a Microsoft Word attachment (.doc or .docx) to cwarner@napf.org.
5. Please keep copies of your Word files.

Procedures (to submit on paper)

1. Send two copies of up to three typed unpublished poems. Maximum of 30 lines per poem.
2. Include name, address, email, telephone number, and age (if 18 or under) in upper right-hand corner of one copy of each poem. Adults, please write “adult category” in upper right-hand corner.
3. For the Youth (12 and under) category, in addition to the information in #2, please also include your school’s name and your teacher’s name.
4. Title each poem.
5. Do not staple individual poems together.
6. Please keep copies of all entries as we will be unable to return them.
7. Send entries to:
Nuclear Age Peace Foundation
PMB 121, 1187 Coast Village Road, Suite 1
Santa Barbara, CA 93108-2794

Any entry that does not adhere to ALL of the contest rules will not be considered for a prize.

Judging

Judging will be done by a committee of poets selected by the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation. Copies of the winning poems from previous years are available here.

Winners

Winners and Honorable Mentions will be announced by September 21, 2018 on the NAPF website. Winners will be notified by email and/or mail. Past years’ winning poems can be found here.

Book Offer

Please include an additional $10 if you would like to receive a copy of Never Enough Flowers: The Poetry of Peace II, a collection of first-place and honorable mention poems of the Barbara Mandigo Kelly Peace Poetry Awards from 2003-2010.

National Poetry Month: Poem-a-Day

April 25, 2018April 25, 20181 Comment

National Poetry Month ends on April 30th, but you can keep the feeling going strong by signing up to receive a poem by email from the American Academy of Poets, the folks responsible for starting National Poetry Month in 1996.

I signed up for Poem-a-Day back in 2014, which means I’ve read and received hundreds of poems over the years. Some days I skim the poem and smile, then move on with my day. Other days, the poem resonates deep within me and shifts my perspective for the rest of the day, following me like a shadow. Either way, receiving a new poem to read each day has been a wonderful way for me to grow my knowledge of the body of American poetry.

You can join thousands of others who have discovered the pleasures of a Poem-a-Day by visiting the Academy of American Poets page here. In the meantime, here’s a copy of today’s poem written by Mineapolis-based poet, Danez Smith.

say it with your whole black mouth

by Danez Smith

say it with your whole black mouth: i am innocent

& if you are not innocent, say this: i am worthy of forgiveness,
of breath after breath

i tell you this: i let blue eyes dress me in guilt
walked around stores convinced the very skin of my palm was stolen

& what good has that brought me? days filled flinching
thinking the sirens were reaching for me

& when the sirens were for me
did i not make peace with god?

so many white people are alive because
we know how to control ourselves.

how many times have we died on a whim
wielded like gallows in their sun-shy hands?

here, standing in my own body, i say: the next time
they murder us for the crime of their imaginations

i don’t know what i’ll do.

i did not come to preach of peace
for that is not the hunted’s duty.

i came here to say what i can’t say
without my name being added to a list

what my mother fears i will say

what she wishes to say herself

i came here to say

i can’t bring myself to write it down

sometimes i dream of pulling a red apology
from a pig’s collared neck & wake up crackin up

if i dream of setting fire to cul-de-sacs
i wake chained to the bed

i don’t like thinking about doing to white folks
what white folks done to us

when i do
can’t say

i don’t dance

o my people

how long will we

reach for god

instead of something sharper?

my lovely doe

with a taste for meat

take

the hunter

by his hand

National Poetry Month: Poetry Postcards

April 6, 20187 Comments

During National Poetry Month, it’s fun to celebrate poetry in small, unexpected ways. The other day, I received this postcard in the mail:

It was delightful to catch this snippet of poetry in my hands, particularly because it was so unexpected and surprising. It made me think that sending a poetry postcard is the perfect way to celebrate creativity and create delight for someone else.

The rules are simple:

Write a poem (or part of a poem) on a postcard
Be sure to include the title and author (if you’re sending the card anonymously and including something you wrote, you may leave the author off the card – just be sure to credit someone else’s work)
Send to friend, acquaintance, small business, etc.

That’s it! Simple and easy, yet powerful.

If you send or receive a postcard, drop me a note in the comments section and let me know about the experience!

National Poetry Month: PLAYING WITH FORM!

April 3, 2018April 6, 20181 Comment

national poetry month 2 It’s April and that means it is National Poetry Month! Even though I love a good celebration as much as the next person, I can’t help but wonder what does it really mean to have a National Poetry Month?

On one level, it means there’s an increase each April (since 1966 when NPM began) in poetry awareness and appreciation, which means it can be easier to find a poetry-related event in our community or a book about poetry at the library. This is exciting and fun to see because poetry often gets overlooked amidst the prose. And during April, most schools teach poetry-related lessons, which is phenomenal because I love thinking about kids having fun with poetry.

But still I wondered, What does it mean for me, the aspiring poet, at the most basic and personal level?

I’ve decided that beyond the sense of belonging a month of national celebration evokes, NPM meant for me, personally, it is time to try new things, new forms, new language, new ideas. A time to be a bit reckless and whimsical. A time to truly embrace poetry as a means of capturing the abstract, of painting with language, of experimenting with sound. A time to be brave with words.

Hand-drawn light bulb over bright colorful blots of paint, on wh

In the UK, they celebrate National Poetry Day in October, and it just so happened one October a few years ago in honor of the UK NPD I was flipping through The Crafty Poet: A Portable Workshop and learned about a form of poetry previously unknown to me – the sonnenizio. It was a moment of pure joy – a new form, a sparkly name… time to play!

Poet Kim Addonizio made up the form by playing with a sonnet. Thus the name, sonnenizio (sonnet + Addonizio) was born. The rules are simple:

Borrow a line from someone else’s sonnet
Take a word from that line and repeat it in every other line (in some form – homonyms work!) in the poem
In true sonnet form, the poem should be 14 lines and the last two should rhyme

try-something-new In honor of National Poetry Month, I encourage you to play with the form. Even if you don’t consider yourself a poet, stretching yourself with a little poetry will work wonders for the rest of your creative life.

And if you do write something, let me know! I’m collecting poems inspired by Cupertino Poet Laureate events for publication in a community anthology. So email me with “Anthology” in the subject line with your sonnenizio (or poem in any other form!) or use the contact form on this website if you’d like to see your work included!

For inspiration, here’s an example by the inventor of the sonnenizio, Kim Addonizio, I found on Genius.com:

Sonnenizio on a Line from Drayton
by Kim Addonizio

Since there’s no help, come let us kiss and part;
or kiss anyway, let’s start with that, with the kissing part,
because it’s better than the parting part, isn’t it –
we’re good at kissing, we like how that part goes:
we part our lips, our mouths get near and nearer,
then we’re close, my breasts, your chest, our bodies partway
to making love, so we might as well, part of me thinks –
the wrong part, I know, the bad part, but still
let’s pretend we’re at that party where we met
and scandalized everyone, remember that part? Hold me
like that again, unbutton my shirt, part of you
wants to I can tell, I’m touching that part and it says
yes, the ardent partisan, let it win you over,
it’s hopeless, come, we’ll kiss and part forever.

14494858_1052448421529899_6375380712797709368_n Kaecey signature

Closing Thoughts for National Poetry Month : Poems by Countee Cullen and Natasha Trethewey

April 30, 2015April 30, 2015Leave a comment

I pledged at the beginning of April to post poetry that engaged in the conversation about race in America. I didn’t quite meet my goal of several posts a week, but NaPoMo is a busy time.

And then all hell broke loose in Baltimore — and so many people were saying things — poetry seemed like it might be a very small voice among all that noise. Searching online for “Baltimore + poetry” brings up many voices and images; I share two poems that seem horribly relevant.

First, this poem, called “Incident” by Countee Cullen, about a moment of racism in the early 20th century.

Incident

Once riding in old Baltimore,
Heart-filled, head-filled with glee,
I saw a Baltimorean
Keep looking straight at me.

Now I was eight and very small,
And he was no whit bigger,
And so I smiled, but he poked out
His tongue, and called me, ‘Nigger.’

I saw the whole of Baltimore
From May until December;
Of all the things that happened there
That’s all that I remember.

Second, this poem of the same name, “Incident,” by Natasha Tretheway, former U.S. Poet Laureate. She opens with a few comments about her life in 1950s Mississippi. Hear Tretheway reading it at this link.

Additionally:

NPR’s collection of “virtual poetry readings” for Freddie Gray
Anthony Reliford’s powerful spoken word poem (you can hear him read it)

The most interesting thing I found is this Harriet blog post on the Poetry Foundation’s website, in which Jericho Brown eviscerates Wolf Blitzer — “How Not to Interview Black People about Police Brutality” — worth the time to read and think about.

Jericho Brown

Poetry (if we let it) opens our ears and eyes to — and fills our hearts and imaginations with — the injustices of the world. What we do with those open eyes, those hearts and imaginations vibrating with expressions of anger, pain, fear, is up to us. How many more poems about “incidents” will people of all races have to write in America, before such things are history? I am not wise enough to know the answer. I know I ask this question from privilege and try to ask it none the less with humility.

Poems and Photos from the Cherry Blossom Festival

April 26, 2015April 30, 2015Leave a comment

What a great day I had at the Cupertino Cherry Blossom Festival yesterday. I posted all my photos on Facebook, and you can see them at this link. David Perez, Erica Goss and I did our magic with typewriters and the imagination of strangers.

Some of the poems were especially lovely. Like this one I wrote with a young man, based on his answers to my questions.

Aman’s Poem

I also play the violin
I like kicking goals in soccer
Pasta with mushrooms tastes like happiness
I wear Lord Shiva on a silver chain
My favorite flowers are sunflowers
My name means peace.

This poem, I wrote with this dad, because his kids were too shy, but they got into the poem!

One of my favorite poems was a collaboration with a sweet young person named Christina, who kept saying “I don’t know” when I’d ask her things. Funny what appears in poems.

Poetry at the Cherry Blossom Festival

April 24, 2015April 24, 20151 Comment

Tomorrow is the Cupertino Cherry Blossom Festival, at Memorial Park. The festival is both days, Saturday April 25 and Sunday April 26, but I’ll only be there on Saturday, with my poetry booth and my poet friends. Erica Goss, Los Gatos Poet Laureate, and David Perez, Santa Clara County Poet Laureate, will both be with me (in booth 15) after about 11 am. I’ll be there the whole day.

(Read about Japanese poetry before you come, if you’re new to the subject).

Come by for a chat, for a free poem (written on the spot just for you by a real poet!), to play with my magnetic poetry or my Haikubes (highly in-authentic, but fun).

I’ll have books of haiku and senryu, both by Japanese poets and by Americans. I’ll also have anthologies and lesson books from California Poets in the Schools.

I hope to see you there!

Poems from Teen Poetry Workshop

April 22, 2015April 22, 2015Leave a comment

As part of my April activities, I co-hosted a workshop for teens at the Cupertino Library with David Perez. Read about the fun we had and read the poems written by three students who joined us.

Some Awesome April-is-Poetry Month Links + Two Silly Poems

April 22, 2015April 30, 2015Leave a comment

NaPoMo is overwhelming. Here is a collection of things I’ve salvaged from the onslaught.

“The Library of Congress is Uploading 75 Years of Poetry and Literature Recordings”

Robert Frost

Yesterday selections from the Archive of Recorded Poetry and Literature at the Library of Congress became available to stream online for the first time — the launch of a project digitizing some of their 2,000 recordings from the past 75 years of literature. “I think that reading poetry and prose on the page is important, but there’s nothing that can replace listening to literature read aloud, especially when it is read by the creator of the work.”

“International Lit Mag Focuses on Dissidents, Exiles and Asking the Hard Questions”

(Review of World Literature Today, March/April 2015 by Nichole Reber)

The Children’s Poetry StoryBox is a physical traveling box that was launched at The Thurber Center in February 2014 and has returned to Columbus, OH.

(I want to do this so much, but it will have to wait until another April….)

At a reception at the Thurber House, you will hear poetry that was begun by famous children’s poets – including current poet laureate Ken Nesbitt, Jane Yule, Georgia Heard, Nikki Grimes, George Ella, Lyons, David Harrison, Alan Wolf – and finished by hundreds of primarily elementary students around the nation.

“Shakespeare’s Sonnets, All 154, Reimagined Through A New York Lens”

(Yes, really, all 154 sonnets, with video. Oh my.)

A crew filming Sonnet 108 at the John T. Brush stairway. Credit Chang W. Lee/The New York Times

Mr. Williams tried matching sonnets with locations based on their “imagery and rhetorical arguments,” pairing, for example, the legal-minded Sonnet 46 with the State Supreme Court building. He mixed well-known locations, like Grand Central Terminal and the Unisphere, with less familiar ones, like the Holocaust memorial near Madison Square Park.

That’s enough for now. Whew. What a month.

I even wrote a poem, sort of a rant, really, actually two rant-like poems, very much the same. Here’s the second one.

SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: THE OPERATING SYSTEM FOR NATIONAL POETRY MONTH

April 12, 2015April 12, 20151 Comment

Another take spin comment cluster of love about National Poetry Month (aka April). I’m on my way to check out Operating System.

The As It Ought to Be Archive

Editor’s Note: April is National Poetry Month. According to the Academy of American Poets, who founded the annual event in 1996, “National Poetry Month is the largest literary celebration in the world, with tens of millions of readers, students, K-12 teachers, librarians, booksellers, literary events curators, publishers, bloggers, and, of course, poets marking poetry’s important place in our culture and our lives.”

Today I want to highlight one of the countless organizations that has picked up the gauntlet the AAP has thrown down. This April the Operating System celebrates its 4th Annual 30-on-30-in-30 Poetry Month Celebration:

“Over the course of Poetry Month The OS brings you 30 poets (+ writers, musicians, and artists) writing on 30 (+ a few extra) poets for 30 days (every day in April). The intention is simple, but crucial: to explode the process of sharing our influences and joys beyond the random. To…

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National Poetry Month: CONTEST!