Genre: Poetry

Vilcek Prizes for Creative Promise Accepting Submissions

G&A: The Contest Blog
5.22.19

Applications are currently open for the Vilcek Foundation’s Prizes for Creative Promise in Literature. Three prizes of $50,000 each are awarded to writers not born in the United States to recognize achievement early in their careers. Poets, fiction writers, and nonfiction writers who are thirty-eight years of age or younger and have published at least one full-length book are eligible. Winners will be notified in the fall and honored at an annual awards ceremony in New York City in Spring 2020.

Using the online submission system, submit a writing sample of up to twenty pages, a curriculum vitae, proof of your immigration status, five press clippings about your work, and contact information for two professional references by June 10. There is no application fee. Visit the website for complete guidelines and eligibility requirements.

The shortlist will be chosen by a jury of experts from the literary community who will evaluate the applicants based on their “excellence, innovation, and impact.”

Established in 2009, the Vilcek Prizes for Creative Promise aim to “encourage and support emerging to mid-career immigrant artists and scientists who have demonstrated exceptional achievements early in their careers.” The awards are given annually to biomedical scientists and in alternating years to writers, dancers, musicians, designers, fashion designers, theater artists, architects, visual artists, and culinary artists. The Vilcek Prize for Creative Promise in Literature was last awarded in 2011 to Dinaw Mengestu.

The Vilcek Prizes are sponsored by the Vilcek Foundation, which is dedicated to raising awareness of immigrant contributions to America. Jan and Marica Vilcek, immigrants from the former Czechoslovakia, established the foundation in 2000.

The Writer’s Center

Reading Venue, Writers Space, Writing Center

Founded in 1976, The Writer’s Center supports writers and everyone who wants to write. The Center offers hundreds of creative writing workshops and dozens of free events for writers, both in person and online, and publishes Poet Lore, America’s oldest poetry journal.

What’s That Smell?

The Time Is Now
5.21.19

Scientists have discovered new evidence that perception of odors can have extremely significant variations from person to person. According to a recent study published in the science journal PNAS, depending on different genetic codes, one person might find the scent of a compound in men’s sweat intensely disgusting, while someone else might find it similar to the scent of vanilla, or might not be able to smell it at all. Write a poem that begins with a scent that you find intense. Then consider the idiosyncrasies of sensory perceptions: Can these experiences be both personal and universal? 

Kayo Chingonyi on His Favorites

Caption: 

“I went through a Philip Glass phase, but I’m out of that now. Lately I write to silence, usually.” In this Vintage Books interview, Kayo Chingonyi answers questions about his literary and pop culture influences, daily routine, and books he thinks everyone should read. Chingonyi won the 2018 International Dylan Thomas Prize for his debut poetry collection, Kumukanda (Chatto & Windus, 2017).

Genre: 
Poetry
Tags: 
Kayo Chingonyi
Kumukanda
Chatto & Windus
2017
International Dylan Thomas Prize
2018
Vintage
2019

Simon Armitage

Caption: 

“I was a very sleepy student until we started reading Ted Hughes...and I just woke up.” Simon Armitage talks to the U.K. Government Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport about what first drew him to poetry and why the medium has only grown more important in recent years. Armitage was named the twenty-first U.K. poet laureate.

Genre: 
Poetry
Tags: 
Simon Armitage
poet laureate
2019

June Gloom

The Time Is Now
5.14.19

Although late spring and early summer are typically associated with the bloom of brightly colored flowers and warming sunshine, “June Gloom” is a very real phenomenon on the southern California coast. May and June constitute the cloudiest months of the year in SoCal, with particularly cool, overcast, and drizzly days marking a gloomy turn not only in the sky, but also in the hearts of regional sunseekers. Does “unseasonable” weather strike you as irritatingly misaligned or unexpectedly refreshing? Write a series of four poems—one for each season—that plays with paradoxical imagery such as a spring snowstorm or an autumn heat wave. Does the unseasonable weather cause unseasonable emotions? How might this be expressed in the manipulation of rhythm, diction, line breaks, punctuation, and spacing in your poems?

Marilyn Nelson Wins Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize

G&A: The Contest Blog
5.7.19

Today the Poetry Foundation named Marilyn Nelson the winner of the 2019 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize. The annual award for outstanding lifetime achievement is one of the most prestigious awards given to American poets and includes a $100,000 prize. The Poetry Foundation also named Terrance Hayes the recipient of the 2019 Pegasus Award for Poetry Criticism and Naomi Shihab Nye the 2019–2021 Young People’s Poet Laureate. The three awards will be presented at the Pegasus Awards Ceremony at the Poetry Foundation in Chicago on June 10.

Poet and translator Marilyn Nelson has published several books, including three poetry collections that were finalists for the National Book Award: Carver: A Life in Poems (Front Street Press, 2001), The Fields of Praise: New and Selected Poems (Louisiana State University Press, 1997), and The Homeplace (Louisiana State University Press, 1990). Nelson won the Frost Medal from the Poetry Society of America in 2012 and is the recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. She is a professor emeritus at the University of Connecticut at Storrs and was the state’s poet laureate from 2001 to 2006.

“Marilyn Nelson has been committed throughout her career to meticulously chronicling the contemporary and historical experience—and contributions—of Black people in America,” said Don Share, editor of the foundation’s magazine, Poetry. “Everyone who cares about how life is lived and felt in this country should read her vivid and deeply considered work.”

The inaugural Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize was awarded to Adrienne Rich in 1986. The prize has since been awarded to Gary Snyder, C. K. Williams, W. S. Merwin, Joy Harjo, and Martín Espada, among others.

The Young People’s Poet Laureate title, which includes a $25,000 prize, celebrates a living writer’s devotion to writing exceptional poetry for young readers. As the 2019–2021 laureate, Nye plans to bring poetry to geographically underserved areas. Nye, who is a professor of creative writing at Texas State University, has published several poetry collections for both young readers and adults. BOA Editions published her most recent collection for adults, The Tiny Journalist, last month.

The $7,500 Pegasus Award for Poetry Criticism, which honors a book of poetry criticism published in the previous year, was awarded to Terrance Hayes for his book To Float in the Space Between: A Life and Work in Conversation with the Life and Work of Etheridge Knight (Wave Books, 2018). A professor at New York University, Hayes has been recognized with numerous awards, including a 2010 National Book Award for his poetry collection Lighthead (Penguin Books, 2010).

The Things You’ve Seen

The Time Is Now
5.7.19

Several years ago, journalist Geoffrey Gagnon observed that there were bowhead whales—who are among the world’s longest-living mammals with life spans of over two hundred years—still alive in the Arctic that were born long before Moby-Dick was written in 1851. This week, write a poem that imagines being in the presence of a creature that has been alive for over two centuries. What might this being have seen or experienced that you would ask about? What historical events pertinent to you have occurred over its lifetime? How does perspective shift over such a long period of time?

Pages

Subscribe to Poetry