Split This Rock 5th Annual poetry contest

Split This Rock Announces its Fifth Annual Adult Poetry Contest

Benefits Split This Rock Poetry Festival
March 22-25, 2012 - Washington, DC
$1,000 Awarded for Poems of

Provocation & Witness

Naomi Shihab Nye, Judge

Naomi Shihab Nye will be featured at the 2012 Split This Rock Poetry Festival. She is the author and/or editor of more than 30 volumes. Her books of poetry include 19 Varieties of Gazelle: Poems of the Middle East, A Maze Me: Poems for Girls, Red Suitcase, Words Under the Words, Fuel, and You & Yours (a best-selling poetry book of 2006). She has been a Lannan Fellow, a Guggenheim Fellow, and a Witter Bynner Fellow. She has received a Lavan Award from the Academy of American Poets, the Isabella Gardner Poetry Award, the Paterson Poetry Prize, four Pushcart Prizes, and numerous honors for her children’s literature, including two Jane Addams Children’s Book Awards. In 2010 she was elected to the Board of Chancellors of the Academy of American Poets.

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:

•Deadline: November 1, 2011 (postmark)
•Reading Fee: $20 – Reduced Recession Rate!

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.

2011 winning poems

2010 winning poems

2009 winning poems

2008 winning poems

Submission Guidelines (also available in Microsoft Word format):

•Send up to 3 unpublished poems, no more than 6 pages total, in any style, in the spirit of Split This Rock (see above).
•Postmark deadline: November 1, 2011
•Include one cover page containing your name, address, phone number, email, and titles of your poems. This is the only part of the submission which should contain your name.
•Enclose a check or money order for $20 (made out to “Split This Rock”) to:

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

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