The Best Poetry Contest 2012

Deadline (postmark):  Thursday, December 15, 2011

Entry fee: $15. Checks should be made out to James River Writers.

Poets may submit up to four original, never-published* poems for the single entry fee of $15. A poet may enter only once.  Submissions must be mailed to
Richmond magazine
Best Poetry Contest
2201 W. Broad St., Suite 105
Richmond, VA 23220.

First prize: $500, publication of winning poem(s) in the April, 2012, issue of Richmond Magazine, and a ticket to the 2012 James River Writers conference. Two finalists will each receive $200.

Rules: Each submission must be typed. One cover sheet should have the author's contact information and the poems' titles. Include name, email address, mailing address, and phone. Poems must not include the author's name or will be disqualified. Send two copies of each set of four (4) poems. One poem per page; all poems must have titles. In addition to the announcement in Richmond Magazine, winners’ names will appear on the JRW website; for a paper copy of the winners’ names, please enclose a self-addressed, stamped envelope. No poems will be returned. To qualify, the writer must be a resident of Virginia, a student at a Virginia college or university, or a member of JRW.

*Regarding online publication: If you have previously published your own poetry in your own blog, it is eligible for submission to this contest. If your poetry has been published in anyone else's blog (other than your own) and/or in any online magazine or other online publication, we will consider it to have been published previously, and it is not eligible for this contest.

The head judge will be Joshua Poteat, recent recipient of the Theresa Pollak Prize for Excellence in the Arts.

Joshua Poteat has published two books of poems, Ornithologies (Anhinga Poetry Prize, 2006) and Illustrating the Machine that Makes the World (University of Georgia Press/Virginia Quarterly Review, 2009), as well as a chapbook, Meditations (Poetry Society of America National Chapbook Award, 2004). Over the last few years, he has won prizes/fellowships from American Literary Review, Bellingham Review, Columbia, Hunger Mountain, Marlboro Review, Nebraska Review, River City, Vermont Studio Center, The Millay Colony, Virginia Commission for the Arts, Virginia Center for Creative Arts, Eastern Frontier Educational Foundation/Norton Island, and many others. Recently he was named the 2011-2012 Donaldson Writer in Residence at The College of William & Mary. He is also an assemblage artist, making light boxes, collages and ink transfers out of found materials. Many of his pieces can be found in private and public collections. He collaborates with the designer Roberto Ventura on installations, one of which won Best in Show for InLight 2009. Poteat lives in Richmond, VA, with the writer Allison Titus and their four pugs. To fund his various pursuits, he works as an editor of assorted texts for The Martin Agency.

Read about the 2010 Poetry Contest

Congratulations to Laura Davenport for winning First Place in the 2010 Best Poetry Contest, co-sponsored by Richmond magazine. For the Richmond magazine article about the winning poems and the judging process, click here:

http://www.richmag.com/?articleID=e2ff35bc11e8cceae8e7ba67eea4d811

The 2010 winners were:

First Place Winner

Laura Davenport
for the poem, “Sermon: New Orleans, 2003”

Two Finalists

Heidi Johannesen Poon
for the poem, “The Problem of the Forest”

Henry Hart
for the poem, “White Goddess”

Honorable mentions

Wendy Miles
for two poems, “The Green Place” and “Memory: Virginia”

Sallie Lupton Jennings
for the poem, “He Stays”

Mil Norman-Risch
for the poem, “Remains”

Virginia Rider
for the poem, “From Miller's Lane”

The Head Judge of the 2010 Contest was Joshua Poteat.

The Judging Process

The two-part process implemented to choose the winning poems was highly unscientific:

1. Find the good ones. 2. Be generous and open when doing so. This seemed like the best way to proceed through over 300 poems. Luckily, the contest readers know good writing when we see it. We’ve read widely, across many sub-genres…from experimental/avant garde to straight ol’ narrative…from neo-formalist works to prose poems. Our choices for first place and the finalists reflect this range. Consider Sermon and The Problem of the Forest — both are dissimilar in many obvious ways yet remain tethered to each other by beautiful and brilliant language.

Winning Poem

I don’t want to speak for the other readers, but the title of the winning poem, Sermon: New Orleans, 2003, bothered me ... for a second or two. I expected a five-page Old Testament-based rant on the coming apocalypse. What I got instead was a balance of lyric and narrative intensity, ambitious in length as well as thought. To sustain a poem over several pages is a juggling act to say the least. When done well, however, the results can be extraordinary. In Sermon, the discursive, weaving voice, casual yet insistent, leads the reader through the recent past, through a vivid and crumbling city, a mysterious life, an abandoned church, and finally, a funeral. It’s a dark path, but the holding back of entropy is dark. And it’s what all good poems do, whether you want them to or not. They hold back ruin, if only for a moment.

Assisting Joshua Poteat in Reading the Entries were A.M. Marshall and Allison Titus.

A.M. Marshall is a poet and artist living in Richmond, VA.

Allison Titus is the author of a book of poems, Sum of Every Lost Ship (Cleveland State University Press, 2009), and a chapbook, Instructions from the Narwhal (Bateau Press, 2007). She lives in Richmond, VA.

JRW holds a poetry contest every other year.
In alternate years, JRW holds
the Best Unpublished Novel Contest.

Read about last year's poetry contest