PUB: Split This Rock Poetry Festival

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Split This Rock Announces its Fourth Annual Adult Poetry Contest

Benefits Split This Rock Poetry Festival - Washington, DC

$1,000 awarded for poems of provocation and witness

Jan Beatty, Judge
Jan Beatty

Submission Guidelines:

Send up to 3 unpublished poems, no more than 6 pages total, in any style, in the spirit of Split This Rock (see below).

Postmark Deadline: November 1, 2010

Include one cover page containing your name, address, phone number, email, and the titles of your poems. This is the only part of the submission that should contain your name. Enclose a check or money order for $25 (made out to "Split This Rock") to:

Split This Rock Poetry Contest
1112 16th Street NW, Suite 600
Washington, DC 20036

The reading fee of $25 supports Split This Rock Poetry Festival. Simultaneous submissions OK, but please notify us immediately if the poem is accepted elsewhere. For more information, info@splitthisrock.org.

Prizes:

  • First place receives $500; second and third place receive $250 each.
  • Winners receive free 2012 festival registration.
  • The 1st-place winner will be invited to read the winning poem at Split This Rock Poetry Festival, 2012.
  • Winning poems will be published here, at SplitThisRock.org.

Details:

Submissions should be in the spirit of Split This Rock: socially engaged poems, poems that reach beyond the self to connect with the larger community or world, poems of provocation and witness.

This theme can be interpreted broadly and may include — but is not limited to — work addressing politics, economics, government, war,leadership; issues of identity (gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, disability, body image, immigration, heritage, etc.); community, civic engagement, education, activism; and poems about history, Americana, cultural icons.

2010 winning poems

2009 winning poems

2008 winning poems

Split This Rock subscribes to the Council of Literary Magazines and Presses Contest Code of Ethics.

Contest Judge Bio: Jan Beatty

Jan Beatty's new book, Red Sugar, was published by the University of Pittsburgh Press in Spring, 2008. Other books include Boneshaker and Mad River, winner of the 1994 Agnes Lynch Starrett Prize. Beatty's poetry has appeared in Quarterly West, Gulf Coast, Indiana Review, and Court Green, and in anthologies published by Oxford University Press, University of Illinois Press, and University of Iowa Press. Awards include the $15,000 Creative Achievement Award in Literature from the Heinz Foundation, the Pablo Neruda Prize for Poetry, and two fellowships from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. For the past thirteen years, she has hosted and produced "Prosody," a public radio show on NPR-affiliate WYEP-FM featuring the work of national writers. Beatty directs the creative writing program at Carlow University, where she runs the Madwomen in the Attic writing workshops and teaches in the MFA program.


THE WORLD & ME Youth Poetry Contest

Sponsored by Split This Rock and Sol Y Soul
We will post details on the 2011 youth poetry contest in late 2010/early 2011

Each year, Split This Rock seeks young people's poems on the theme,“The World & Me.”

  • What about your neighborhood/city/country/planet makes you happy and proud?
  • What makes you sad? If you were in charge, what would you change?
  • Are there issues you care deeply about?
  • Situations in the news or in your neighborhood that make you mad? Or glad?

Eligible Writers: Poets must live in or attend school in DC and qualify for either of the following contest groups:

  • Ages 12 and under
  • High school students ages 13 and up

For more information, contact info@splitthisrock.org or 202-787-5210.