Dear Poet:
Colonus Publishing, Inc., offers a Prize for the year 2017 in the maximum amount of two hundred dollars for original poems. The poems must be new work, which is to say, the poems must not otherwise have been published in any other manner of any kind or nature, including, but not limited to, publication on the printed page in a book, journal, or magazine; electronic publication on the Internet, or audiobook or other electronic recording. If you have experienced the poetic good fortune of having your poems published on the sides of a garbage truck in Sydney, Australia, like the poet Jessi Randall, then yes, that is a publication, too. When I say new, I mean new. And that of course means you can be an unpublished poet and enter this contest.
But if you cannot see the connection between the landscapes of Walt Whitman’s “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry” and Allen Ginsberg’s “Sunflower Sutra,” then you should not enter this contest. For the purposes of this Prize, I am generally not interested in confessional poetry, but Sylvia Plath’s “Daddy” is a very fine landscape poem. Rainer Maria Rilke would be more interested in your crying out that your solitude causes you pain than I. I am more interested in knowing why your caged bird sings. And I would like to know something about Pavel Friedman’s butterfly. But there are no subject matter restrictions.
Please follow the link below for the contest rules, which are hereby incorporated into the offer for the Colonus Publishing Poetry Prize for 2017, and are conditions precedent to any award of the Prize.
Colonus Publishing Poetry Prize Rules
Sincerely,
Rich Skalstad
Editor, Colonus Publishing, Inc.