Mr. Bedell admired the first prize poem’s “sense of ambition and daring.” He went on to say that the poem showed “fresh language and a rare combination of fearlessness and accuracy. The leaps between movements are just brilliant…”
Second prize poem “ The Facts” demonstrates a “flawless marriage of memory-driven narrative and lyric beauty…the poet has a phenomenal sense of line and a consistency of tone…I was absolutely enthralled by the movement of the poem…”
“The Green Sweater,” Mr. Bedell said, managed to sustain “narrative rhythm in a short-lined poem…the language is pitch-on, and the focus (image-by-image) is exactly where it needs to be to keep the reader inextricably involved in the scene.”
Judge Jack Bedell is the Woman’s Hospital Distinguished Professor in the Humanities at Southeastern Louisiana University, where he also serves as editor of Louisiana Literature and director of Louisiana Literature Press. His most recent books are Come Rain, Come Shine ( Texas Review Press) and French Connections: A Gathering of Franco-American Poets (LaLit Press).
CPS CONTESTS: HOW ARE THEY JUDGED?
PROCESS FOR CHOOSING JUDGES
Judges are selected by the president in consultation with the contest chair and/or the board. Judges will be announced on the website and on flyers announcing contests. Judges receive a nominal stipend.
PROCESS FOR JUDGING
Each entrant sends in two copies of a poem: one with contact information and one without. The Contest Chair separates the poems and marks the anonymous copies with numbers. Judges are asked to name a first, second, and third place winner and may also select up to three honorable mentions. Winning poems are then submitted to the contest chair, who notifies winners and those who have submitted a SASE.
NUMBER OF ENTRIES
This varies widely, but in recent years between 50 and 120 different poets have participated in each contest, sending in up to three poems each. The DeCaro and Dehn contests typically get fewer submissions than the other competitions.
PUBLICATION OF WINNERS
The winners of the Connecticut River Review Contest, the Brodine/Brodinsky Contest, and the Wallace W. Winchell Contest are published in Connecticut River Review. Winners of other CPS contests are published in Long River Run II. Although honorable mentions are not published, the poets' names and titles of their poems are printed.
RECENT JUDGES FOR CPS CONTESTS
Judge for 2009 Decaro Contest: Bessy Reyna is an opinion columnist for the Hartford Courant. Her poems and stories are found in U.S. and Latin American literary magazines and anthologies. Reyna’s latest book, The Battlefield of Your Body , a bilingual poetry collection, was released in June, 2005 by the Hill-Stead Museum
Brodine / Brodinsky Poetry Competition, 2007: Steve Straight, professor of English and director of the poetry program at Manchester Community College, author of The Water Carrier. Straight has directed the Connecticut Poetry Circuit and the Seminar Series for the Sunken Garden Poetry Festival.
Al Savard Memorial Contest, 2007: FAITH VICINANZA, published poet, photographer, literary events manager, and information technology consultant.
Connecticut River Review Contest, 2007: ELOISE BRUCE, author of Rattle (Cavankerry Press), active in organizations related to theater, poetry, education, and social justice.
Lynn DeCaro Contest, 2007: RAVI SHANKAR, Poet-in-Residence and Professor at Central Connecticut State University and founding editor of the online journal http:..www.drunkenboat.com. His first book of poems, Instrumentality (Cherry Grove, 2004), was a finalist for the Connecticut Book Awards.
Dehn Competition, 2007: NORAH POLLARD, author of two books of poetry, Leaning In and Report from the Banana Hospital (both published by Antrim House), and recipient of the Academy of American Poets Prize.
Wallace W. Winchell Contest, 2007: Vivian Shipley is the Connecticut State University Distinguished Professor and the Editor of Connecticut Review from Southern Connecticut State University. She has published five chapbooks and her seventh book of poems, Hardboot: Poems New & Old, (Southeastern Louisiana University Press, 2005) won the 2006 Paterson Prize for Sustained Literary Achievement and the 2006 Connecticut Press Club Prize for Best Creative Writ! ing. Sh e won the 2005 Lifetime Achievement Award for Service to the Literary Community from the Library of Congress Connecticut Center for the Book and the 2005 SCSU Faculty Scholar Award. Gleanings: Old Poems, New Poems (Southeastern Louisiana University Press, 2003) won the Paterson Prize for Sustained Literary Achievement and was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. When There Is No Shore, also nominated for the Pulitzer Prize, won the 2003 Connecticut Book Award for Poetry from the Library of Congress Center for the Book and the 2002 Word Press Poetry Prize.
Winning Poems from the CT Poetry Society contests can be view as PDF files by clicking on the links Below:
Wallace W. Winchell Contest
Dehn Competition, 2007
Lynn DeCaro Contest, 2007
Connecticut River Review Contest
Al Savard Memorial Contest
Brodine / Brodinsky Poetry Competition 2006
Brodine / Brodinsky Poetry Competition 2007
The Connecticut Poetry Society is pleased to announce the winners of the 2008 Brodine Brodinsky Poetry Contest*.
There is no longer a Broodine /Brodinsky Contest, they are now honored as part of the CT Poetry Award
Our judge Maria Sassi had this to say about the poems she considered:
There was an abundance of good poems. The word ART derives from the word artifice. It is the artist’s talent to make a work, whether it be sculpture, oil on canvas, musical score or poem, seem not worked at all, but a piece that unrolls itself, smoothly or rapid-fire, toward the core of its truth.
From more than 100 entries, Judge Maria Sassi selected these poems:
1 st prize : “Fledgling” by Doris Henderson of Danbury, CT
2 nd prize: “Letter to a Dying Poet” by Constance Snyder of E. Thetford, VT
3 rd prize: “A Woman’s Hands in Time of War” by Lisha Adela García of Mesa, AZ
Honorable Mentions go to Karla P. Rusch for “Pluto,” Barbara L. Batt for “Gretel,” and Jim Bainbridge for “Homesickness.”
Sassi called the first prize poem “a daring work with unique qualities of voice and driving language—it flies.” She characterized the second prize winner as “an unrhymed sonnet that unrolls itself smoothly toward the poem’s truth.” Sassi described the third prize winner as “an intriguing narrative, almost cinematic.”
CT River Review Poetry Contest Winners 2009
The Connecticut Poetry Society is pleased to announce the winners of the 2009 Connecticut River Review Poetry Contest. From a very strong field of submissions, Judge Brian Clements selected these poems:
1 st prize: “I’ll Know the Title Next Time I Hear the Train Whistle” by Mark Wagenaar of Charlottesville, Virginia
2 nd prize: “ Nome” by Jeanne Wagner of Kensington, California
3 rd prize: “How to Teach a Child about Death” by Amanda Auchter of Houston, Texas
Honorable Mentions: “Prequel to Genesis and the Missing Second Book: Coral Castle” by L. Christain, “A Shadow Denser than Night” by Robert J. Enright, “crow valley” by Elizabeth Myhr, “Subject Line: Rain is General” by Susan Holahan, and “Forgettery” by Kathleen Serocki.
Mr. Clements stated that first prize poem “ seduces with its depth of imagination, mythology of mind, and clarity of vision. The poem’s landscape… is lushly imaged, but also lushly aligned with the inscape, where distance and blossom and trains and a ringing bell all signal the simultaneous beauty and melancholy…”
His comments on the other winners: “ Nome ” succeeds, like John Ashbery’s “Instruction Manual,” by taking us in vivid detail to a place where the author or speaker is not and perhaps never has been…making quite present an absence, making us feel intimately the loss of a thing never held.”
“How to Teach a Child about Death” makes intimate and tender again a moment that verges on the cliché, the sentimental; but the poet’s alert attention to the body, whether living or dead, and to the things that grab the attention of the living--butterscotch, braids, a corpse’s stitched lip--keeps this poem vital…”
Judge Brian Clements is Professor of Writing at Western Connecticut State University and coordinator of WestConn’s MFA in Professional Writing. He edits Sentence: a journal of prose poetics and Sentence’s parent press, Firewheel Editions. His most recent books are Disappointed Psalms (Meritage Press) and And How to End It (prose poems from Quale Press).
Winners of this contest should find their prize money included with this notice. They are asked to submit the winning poems electronically to connpoetry@comcast.net so that they will be included on the web site and in the next issue of Connecticut River Review, which is sent free of charge to all CPS members. CRR is generally published in late summer, so look for it then. Additional copies may be ordered by sending a check for $10 (made out to CPS) to CRR Order, CPS, PO Box 270554, West Hartford, CT 06127.
Kudos to the winners and many thanks to all who entered; the level of the writing was high. You can find out more about our contests and publications at www.ct-poetry-society.org.
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CPS Announces Winners of Dehn Poetry Contest
To view winning poems CLICK HERE
The Connecticut Poetry Society is pleased to announce the winners of the 2008 Dehn Poetry Contest. Judge Pamela Nomura selected these poems:
1 st prize: “Confession” by Paige Steinert of Asnuntuck Community College
2 nd prize: “There are Two Things I’m Sure Of” by Bethany Dixon of Ithaca College
3 rd prize: “Madeleine au Bois d’Amour” by Jennifer Dempsey of Western Michigan University
About the first prize poem, Judge Pamela Nomura stated, “This poem invites us to open ourselves and explore the difficult beauty of our human condition, our frailty and our strength, but most of all, our ongoing quest for connection. The control of tone and language, image and voice ground us profoundly into a specific experience, so that it becomes ours, and by the time we come to those powerful last lines, we are both the lover and the beloved…”
Comments on the other winners: On the second prize winner, Nomura said, “There Are Two Things I am Sure of is a stunning example of the way a title is an essential component of the poem: adding a perspective that expands and deepens the experience. The form and apparent simplicity draw us forward to that last line…” And regarding the third prize poem, Nomura commented, “The specific details and the rich language of Madeleine create a reality of what it is to come of age. she is just a girl--but she is more than that. She is, through this poem, a reminder to pay attention, to pause a moment longer...”
Judge Pamela Nomura is the Department Chair of Creative Writing for the Greater Hartford Academy of the Arts and Director of the Poetry Center at Trinity College. Her book, Water and Land by Turns was published by the Hill-Stead Museum in 2001.
Winning poems will be included in the next issue of Long River Run II, which is sent free of charge to all CPS members.
CPS Announces Winners of Winchell Contest
February 9, 2008 ----------------Click Here to View Winning Poems
The Connecticut Poetry Society is pleased to announce the winners of the 2008 Wallace Winchell Poetry Contest. Out of approximately 130 entries, Judge Vivian Shipley selected these poems:
1 st prize: “Dear Theo” by Nicholas Giosa of Wethersfield , CT
2 nd prize: “A Fragment Is” by Shari O’Brien of Toledo , OH
3 rd prize: “Dear Laura Ingalls Wilder” by Julia Meylor Simpson of East Providence , RI
About the first prize poem, Shipley stated, “The choice of subject matter, Van Gogh’s brother, is what drew me to this imaginative and original poem again and again. The point of view creates an intimate involvement with Theo and caused me to think about the man and his role in preserving his brother’s artistic masterpieces that I would otherwise never have known.”
Shipley reacted to the second prize winner this way: “What a lively exploration of grammar! I was immediately drawn into the poem by the first two lines—a question no English teacher could resist… fine use of a unique metaphor of the sentence fragment—”
And about the third prize winner she had this to say, “The precision of detail is what initially attracted me to this poem. I also admire how the poet intertwined a youthful passion for reading, the imagination, and years later, the physical life present in the real Dakota prairie.”
Vivian Shipley, our judge for this contest, is Connecticut State University Distinguished Professor and the Editor of Connecticut Review from Southern Connecticut State University. She has published five chapbooks and her seventh book of poems, Hardboot: Poems New & Old, (Southeastern Louisiana University Press, 2005) won the 2006 Paterson Prize for Sustained Literary Achievement and the 2006 Connecticut Press Club Prize for Best Creative Writing.
Poetry Critique Checklist
Before you send a poem somewhere consider these items:
Theme or Essence
What is the core truth of this poem?
Does it come across clearly? Is it memorable?
Would you want to read this poem again?
Could you imagine its meaning changing over time?
Story
Is there a clear story?
Too much? Too little?
Are there any parts left out? Is there something more you want to know?
Can the reader relate to the story on some universal level?
Does any part of the poem distract you, confuse you, or otherwise take you “out” of the poem?
Does the poem “show” instead of “tell”?
Length
Is the poem too long? Does it end before the end? Where?
Are there lines/stanzas that could be removed?
Imagination
Is there something new or fresh about the poem?
Does it use a novel image or analogy?
Are the images concrete, with sufficient detail?
What is the dominant feeling or emotion of the poem?
Meter/rhyme/word choice/line breaks/punctuation
How does the poem look on the page? Is it in balance? If not, is this purposeful?
Does the pacing serve the purpose of the poem?
Are there any words that are hard to pronounce, that stop the flow, or that you do not understand or recognize?
Are line breaks and punctuation consistent? Do they serve the purpose of the poem?
Music
Do the words flow musically, harmonically?
Does the poem use alliteration, repletion, etc. effectively?
Is the poem beautiful (or terribly beautiful)?
Complexity, novelty
Does the poem have range?
Is it clever?
Does it work on multiple levels?
Is there a turn, or surprise at the end? Is it effective?
Is the poem unpredictable?
