Contest Guidelines
Final Judge: Frances P. Adler
Submission dates: March 1, 2010-May 31, 2010(postmarked)
Prize: Winner will receive $300 cash award and publication in CALYX Journal (Vol. 26:2, Winter 2011). The winner and all finalists will receive a one-volume subscription, and all their poems will be published on CALYX’s website (www.calyxpress.org).
Details: Each entry can include up to three (3) unpublished poems, no more than six (6) manuscript pages total. Do not put your name on the same page as a poem; all entries are read blind. Include a separate cover letter with name, address, phone, email, and titles of poem/s. No manuscripts will be returned. Please send unpublished work and please do not send simultaneous submissions. The Journal Editorial Collective reads manuscripts first, then selects 15-20 to send to the final judge. Judge’s decisions are final.
Reading Fee:
$15 per entry, all checks in U.S. currency on a U.S. bank, checks payable to CALYX.
Notification:
Contest winner and finalists will be notified by October 30, 2010, and announced on CALYX’s website, www.calyxpress.org. All entrants will receive prize results, and U.S. entrants will receive an issue of CALYX Journal in October 2010.
Final Judge: Frances P. Adler
is the author of five books: two poetry collections, Making of a Matriot (Red Hen Press, 2003), and Raising The Tents (Calyx Books, 1993), and three collaborative poetry-photography books. She is also the co-editor of Fire and Ink: An Anthology of Social Action Writing (University of Arizona Press, Fall 2009). Adler's poems and prose are published in Poetry International, Calyx, Counterpunch, Bridges, Ms. Magazine, The Progressive, and The Congressional Record, among others. Her awards include a California State Senate Award for Artistic and Social Collaboration, an NEA Regional Award, and the Obama New Millennium Award. Adler is a professor of creative writing at California State University Monterey Bay, and founder of their Creative Writing and Social Action Program.
Send submission to:
CALYX, INC.
Lois Cranston Poetry Prize
PO Box B
Corvallis, OR 97339
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2009 Lois Cranston Memorial Poetry Prize Winners
Linda Strever of Olympia, WA is the recipient of the 2009 Eighth Annual Lois Cranston Memorial Poetry Prize. Strever’s poem was selected from almost 700 poems submitted to the contest from all over the country and Canada. Her winning poem “How to Become the Oracle” has been published in the Winter 2010 issue (Volume 25:3) of CALYX Journal. She also received a $300 cash award.
Two poets received an Honorable Mention in the contest: Pat Cason of Vancouver, WA for her poem, “She Used to Call me Chickadee” and Kathryn Alison Graves of Keizer, OR for her poem, “Findings.” Both poets receive a subscription to the journal.
The final contest judge was Marilyn Chin, a highly acclaimed poet and activist who has published three collections of poetry and a book of tales. Born in Hong Kong and raised in Portland (OR), she received a BA in Chinese literature from the University of Massachusetts and an MFA from the University of Iowa. Chin has won numerous awards for her work and is currently a professor in the English Department at San Diego State University (CA).
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2009 Lois Cranston Memorial Poetry Prize Winning Poems
How to Become the Oracle
The female body, its creases and declivities,
leading to the sacred opening...
Amy Clampitt
from her poem, “Dodona: Asked of the Oracle”
You fear the opening that could bare you to anything—
probes, blades, blunt instruments; the fondler, abuser,
rapist. You close down to keep yourself intact. Nothing
can harm the force that animates your molecules, ties you
to everything, gives you your place and your part. Give up
doubt. It doesn’t suit you. Do for yourself what you do
for everyone else: bear the deepest good. Become a vessel
capable of holding the peregrine falcon, its stupendous
ability to see, to dive, to find from three thousand feet
the morsel that will feed it. Hold the five-hundred-year
forest, ringed with lightning, drought, fire, flood. Hold
the rippling cloud, the vital brightness beyond, blue
so vivid it wets your eyes without trying. Give up
trying so hard, what tries you, makes you ride your
high horse, as if you could ever be a proper woman.
Ditch the sidesaddle, the dictate to tuck your skirts
primly beneath you. Open your sacred legs astride
that brawny back and ride for all you’re worth. Let
your hair, your face, your skin ravish the wind. Feel
the grip of your thighs holding you on that glorious
back, galloping, thick mane in your fists. Feel the dust
fly in your wake. Feel the lengthening gait, as if
any moment you could be airborne. Lean in, wrap
your arms around the ample neck, offer no resistance.
Become the creature that rides waves of muscle,
air and light: part woman, part horse, part prophet.
Become the being that brings the horse to its wildest.
Linda Strever
Honorable Mention
She Used to Call me Chickadee
but today is one of mom’s bad days, by which
I mean her words have gone missing, her body’s intimate
treason involves diaper duties I thought
I’d escaped by not having children, myself. She can’t
swallow her pills, stumbles and pratfalls, so we sit
& watch Lucy and Ethel in the chocolate factory
stuffing candies down their dresses, into their
aprons and hats as the conveyor belt speeds up.
Mom never liked Lucy’s bug-eyed mugging
and out-sized wails but this marathon, back-to-back
black & white episodes, is the madcap babysitter
we both need, with today’s snowstorm a kind
of dementia, the way the depopulated sky
has been un-written, lost the calligraphy
of birds; and also the way the town’s shut down,
synapses frozen, no mail or papers delivered
for days, roads impassable. Lucy’s giving
Ethel driving lessons in the new Caddy
Ricky hasn’t insured yet; by driving lessons
I mean, they’ve smashed it up pretty good.
When Ricky gets home he’ll be steamed, Lucy’ll
have some ‘splainin’ to do. I think about God
sometimes, how maybe She does & maybe She doesn’t
have a good explanation for this, by which
I mean any of this and not just my mom.
I think of heaven as the sky’s blank screen
for shadow puppetry. Mom calls me Honey
because she can’t remember my name;
Lucy hams her way out of one more jam
in a wacky disguise, hatches schemes to meet
John Wayne or the Queen; and I miss the birds:
the squabble of crows, bobbling chickadees,
even the flicker’s crimson slash.
I’d set seed out for the birds if I thought
it would lure them back. If I knew
what they wanted from me.
Pat Cason
Honorable Mention
Findings
In a small consulting room, screened from the door
by a half-drawn curtain, they track my brother’s brain.
Brisk, white people, crisply dressed who lean
and fold into their stethoscopes—listening
to every sound like well trained musicians.
I imagine hundreds of miles of neurons
all those nerves, all that awareness and alertness
spreading itself out, around me—all that listening
as hope, blood and saline drips through a vertical web
of tubing. My mother asks me to pray again. I think,
hope is an appalling feeling and praying a way
of haggling with God. Instead I notice cobwebs
growing on a white iron table outside the hospice doors,
the hauling breath of the last night nurse after her shift,
the man with AIDS pacing on his thin-slim feet—
Isn’t that a kind of prayer?
Kathryn Alison Graves |
