The Poetry Poetry Center Book Award

Deadline: January 31, 2001.

The Poetry Center & American Poetry Archives invites submissions for its 2001 Book Award. The Poetry Center Book Award has been given since 1980 to an outstanding book of poems published by an individual author in the current year.

Past winners include Alice Notley, Sharon Olds, Larry Eigner, Laura Moriarty, Jackson MacLow, Yusef Komunyakaa, Lyn Hejinian, Luis J. Rodríguez, Adrian Louis, Leslie Scalapino, Carol Snow, C.D. Wright, Barbara Guest, Jane Hirshfield, Elaine Equi and Cole Swensen. Kevin Davies book Comp. (Edge Books, 2000) was selected this year by judge Kevin Killian for the 2000 Award. (See details below.) The award consists of a $500 cash prize to the poet and an invitation to read in the Poetry Center reading series.

To be eligible, books must be published and copyrighted in 2001.  The award is for volumes by an individual author; anthologies, collaborations or translations are not accepted.

To enter, mail one copy of 2001 copyright book plus a $10 entry fee to:

The Poetry Center Book Award
The Poetry Center
1600 Holloway Avenue
San Francisco, CA 94132

Annual Poetry Center Book Award 2000 goes to Canadian poet Kevin Davies

The Poetry Center is pleased to announce the winner of this year's Poetry
Center Book Award. Kevin Davies book Comp. (2000, published by Edge Books,
of Washington, DC) was selected by this year's judge for the award,
prolific San Francisco writer Kevin Killian, from among over 200 entries.

The judge's citation reads as follows:

With pleasure I bestow the 2000 Poetry Center Book Award on Kevin Davies
and his book Comp. (Edge Books). Comp. is a book of great passion and
intelligence, entwined together like the two creepy snakes of the caduceus.
Davies seems to know all about class, money, politics, labor, and how the
debates behind them form our notions of sexuality, power and aesthetics
(beauty). He's persuasive, forceful enough to make me believe, and reading
his book, one finds page after page of emotional sustenance, the hot fire
of anger and the chill of a wonderful mind. "Can't," "couldn't," "didn't,"
the words used most frequently in Comp., are followed by "if," an enactment
of deracination and despair leavened by a subjunctive hope, and by Kevin
Davies' own coruscating wit. He's the Stanley Kubrick of poetry (and I
mean that in a good way), and Comp. is the most invigorating poem I've read
in a long, long time.
-Kevin Killian

Kevin Davies was born and raised on Vancouver Island. In the 1980s he was
active in the Vancouver poetry community and was a member of the Kootenay
School of Writing collective. Since 1992 he has lived in New York City,
where he is now employed as a financial proofreader. Pause Button (Tsunami
Editions, Vancouver, 1992) and Comp. form the first two parts of his
Trilogy of Error, which will be completed by his current work in progress,
The Golden Age of Paraphernalia.

Kevin Killian is a poet, novelist, critic, and playwright. He has written
a book of stories, Little Men (1996), which won the PEN Oakland award for
fiction, two novels, Shy (1989) and Arctic Summer (1997), a book of
memoirs, Bedrooms Have Windows (1989), and, with Lew Ellingham, co-wrote
the biography Poet Be Like God: Jack Spicer and the San Francisco
Renaissance (1998). His poetry and fiction have been widely anthologized;
he has reported on the Bay Area art scene for numerous magazines; and, an
active member of San Francisco's Poets Theater, he has written or
co-written thirty plays for them. With Dodie Bellamy he coedits the
SF-based writing/art zine Mirage #4/Period[ical]. His first collection of
poetry, Argento Series, will appear in June 2001 (Krupskaya Books).

The Audre Lorde Creative Writing Award

Deadline: March 1, 2002

The Poetry Center and American Poetry Archives is pleased to announce Gaynell Gavin of Lincoln, NE as the winner of the 2001 Audre Lorde prize in poetry.

Audre Lorde gave two readings at The Poetry Center and American Poetry Archives at San Francisco State University (1974, 1986), both of which are available for viewing or purchase in our Archives.  When she died of breast cancer in 1992 she was Poet Laureate of the State of New York and the author of many books including Zami: a new way of spelling my name, The Cancer Journals, Chosen Poems Old and new and The Marvelous Arithmetics of Distance.  Her activism as a woman of color remained a driving force behind much of her writing, both essays and poetry.  Among her awards and honors are two grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Astraea Lesbian Action Fund Writers Award, The Broadside Poets Award and the Walt Whitman Citation of Merit.

In her honor, an award will be given to a student writer enrolled in a state university or college whose work, in its artistry, expresses a social conscience.  The contest alternates each year between poetry and fiction; the award in 2002 will be given for fiction.  Requirements: Students should submit a manuscript of no more than 10 pages and a self-addressed, stamped envelope for information on the winner.  Manuscripts will not be returned unless an appropriate SASE is also included.  Deadline for submission is March 1, 2002.  The award, which includes a cash prize, will be announced in May 2002.

To enter, mail your manuscript to:

Audre Lorde Creative Writing Award in Fiction
The Poetry Center
1600 Holloway Avenue
San Francisco, CA 94132
 
 

The Rella Lossy Poetry Award 2001

The Poetry Center and American Poetry Archives wishes to thank everyone who submitted entries to the Rella Lossy Poetry Award. After careful review of hundreds of entries, we are pleased to announce the winners of the Rella Lossy Poetry Award for 2001:

Ann Snodgrass/Cambridge, MA

Garth Greenwell/W. Harrison, NY

A.F. Thomas/ San Rafael, CA

Rella Lossy died in April of 1996, the same year that her book of poems, Time Pieces, collected works of over 50 years, was published. She made her home in the Bay Area, where she was a member of The Dramatists Guild, a theater critic for Bay Arts Review, and a founding member in the Bay Area Theater Critics Circle. In addition, she was a former member of the Iowa Poetry Workshop, where she studied with Robert Lowell, Karl Shapiro, and Wallace Fowlie.

The Rella Lossy Poetry Award is offered in alternating years to three poets who have not yet had a book published. The award includes a cash prize and publication of the three winning manuscripts together in a chapbook. There will be no award in 2002. Check this site for details on the 2003 award.

Academy of American Poets Award for 2002

The Poetry Center and American Poetry Archives is pleased to announce Theresa A. Yob as the winner of the Academy of American Poets Harold Taylor Prize for 2001. Honorable mentions go to Sherlyn Jimenez and Laura Walker.

The Academy of American Poets University and College Students Awards at SFSU are administered by The Poetry Center and American Poetry Archives.

Upcoming Deadline: February 15, 2002, 5:00 P.M
 

SFSU students may submit up to 3 poems and the total manuscript must not exceed 10 pages.  (Example: One ten page manuscript would constitute an entire single submission.) Manuscripts must be clearly typed and legible.  Manuscripts will not be returned. Names should not appear on manuscript pages.  The writer's name, address, telephone number and social security number should be included in a cover letter accompanying the manuscript. The winner will receive a $100 check from the Academy of American Poets. Results will be announced in late April 2002. Deliver manuscript to:

The Poetry Center and American Poetry Archives
ACADEMY OF AMERICAN POETS AWARD
San Francisco State University
1600 Holloway Ave.
San Francisco, CA 94132

Or room 512 in the Humanities Building, or the mailbox for The Poetry Center in Humanities 125.

Late, incomplete or illegible submissions will not be considered.
 
 
 
 

The San Francisco Browning Society's Poetry Prize

The Poetry Center and American Poetry Archives wishes to thank everyone who submitted entries to the San Francisco Browning Society's Poetry Prize contest. We are pleased to announce the winners of the Browning Society award for 2001:

First and Second place: Mary D'Alleva

Tied for Third Place: Jasmine Deloria Kelly, Myra Martin Parker

Upcoming Deadline: November 30, 2001

CONTEST RULES:

1)  All entries must be original, unpublished DRAMATIC MONOLOGUES written by SFSU Creative Writing students.  The dramatic monologue, as evolved by Robert Browning, is a poem written in the first person singular in which the speaker expresses his/her own character (as well as the character of a person spoken about in the poem) through a discourse with a silent listener, who may or may not be the subject of the poem.  Check the Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics for a fuller description of the dramatic monologue. Students are encouraged to read "My Last Duchess," "Porphyra's Lover," or "The Laboratory."  POEMS IN ANY OTHER FORM WILL NOT BE CONSIDERED FOR THIS AWARD.

2)  Submissions are limited to 2 poems per student of not more than 5 pages each.

3)  The poet's name, address, phone number and social security number must appear on a cover sheet accompanying the manuscript.  We request that names not be put on poems so that they may be judged anonymously.  Please submit 2 copies of your work.

4)  Poets retain full rights to their work, but manuscripts will not be returned.

5)  Manuscripts should be submitted to the Poetry Center and American Poetry Archives, San Francisco State University, NO LATER THAN FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 30, 2001. Winners will be announced in the spring of 2001 and will be contacted at their home addresses.

The winning poems will be read at a Browning Society meeting at the Metropolitan Club in
San Francisco.  All winners are invited to attend the meeting and to be guests of the Browning Society at the luncheon that immediately follows.  In addition, the First Place is invited to read at the Student Awards Reading on campus in the Spring of 2001, sponsored by the Creative Writing

PRIZES:

First Place                 $100
Second Place               $50
Third Place                $25
Three Honorable Mentions    $10 each