Tag: Cape Cod

Prize: $1,000
Entry Fee: $15
Deadline: 6/19/17
Genre: Poetry
Website: http://www.cultural-center.org/

11^th Annual National & Regional Poetry Competition

The Cultural Center of Cape Cod will award a National Prize of $1000  for a single, unpublished poem that has not won 1st prize in any national competition. Open to all U.S. residents 18 years & older. A Regional Prize of $250 will be awarded for a single, unpublished poem (that has not won 1st prize in any national competition) by an adult resident of Cape Cod, Nantucket, or Martha’s Vineyard. All Cape and Islands poets are also eligible for the National Award. A committee will judge.

General Guidelines

Submit up to three poems of any style or subject totaling no more than five pages with an entry fee of $15 by June 19, 2017 (postmark).

All entries should be typewritten on plain, white paper. The poet’s name should not appear on any page except the cover page, which should include name, address, phone number, and email address, the titles of the poems submitted, and a brief bio.

Simultaneous submissions are permitted, but please notify immediately if submissions are accepted for publication elsewhere.

Manuscripts will not be returned.

Winners will be notified and their names posted on the Cultural Center’s web site by September 2017. No other notification will be made.

Make checks payable to Cultural Center of Cape Cod. Mail submissions to Poetry Competition, Cultural Center of Cape Cod, 307 Old Main St., South Yarmouth, MA 02664

For more information, contact Associate Director Lauren Wolk at lwolk@cultural-center.org

PAST WINNERS:

The Cultural Center would like to thank all who submitted work to the 2016 National and Regional Poetry Competition. There were many excellent poems from which our committee of eight readers could choose only two:

2016 National Winner of the Cultural Center poetry Competition is Angela Patten, of Burlington, Vermont, for Tracks.
2016 Regional Winner is Carole A. Stasiowski of Cotuit, Massachusetts, for Why the Cat Has Not Died.

Finalists:
J. Lorraine Brown of Mashpee, Massachusetts, for Alone on Sage Lot Pond
Michele Herman of New York, New York, for The Human Condition at the CVS
Heidi Seaborn of Seattle, Washington, for Hypothermia Survival Guide
John Surowiecki of Amston, Connecticut, for Little Pink Man

National winner Angela Patten is the author of three poetry collections, In Praise of Usefulness (Wind Ridge Books), Reliquaries and Still Listening (both from Salmon Poetry, Ireland), and a prose memoir, High Tea at a Low Table (Wind Ridge Books). Born and raised in Dublin, Ireland, Patten now lives in Burlington, Vermont, where she teaches literature and creative writing at the University of Vermont.

Tracks
By Angela Patten

After surgery the stitch-marks look
like bird-feet walking up my arm.
But what strange bird has left
its bone-white prints embedded
in my wrist like needle-tracks?
Perhaps it was the raven,
that faux-sorrowful funeral director
walking beak-forward, gloved hands
folded behind his back, who walks the
twin trajectories of a railway line
that leads to a long-defunct station
where I might meet myself returning
from the beach with two scabbed knees
embossed inoculations against disease
the weals of ancient injuries like medals
from the battlefields of childhood
and my mother’s crowsfeet
inching toward my eyes.