Submission Guidelines

All forms accepted, 40 lines max per poem. No previously published poems, or poems that have won previous prizes.  Winner receives $1000, publication in String Poet, and composition of original music by professional composer inspired by the winning poem, to be performed at the Awards Ceremony in September 2014. Winner and Runners-up published in Winter 2014 issue of String Poet and invited to read at the Awards Ceremony. All contest submissions are considered for publication in journal. There is no theme for submission. String Poet does not solicit poems solely on the subject of music. Reading the journal archives is a great way to become familiar with the type of work that String Poet publishes.

Entry Fee: $15.00 — up to 5 poems, up to 40 lines per poem
Submissions deadline: May 20, 2014
Submissions can be made on-line, or by post.

Final Judge: David Yezzi’s books of poetry are The Hidden Model (TriQuarterly Books, 2003) and Azores (Swallow Press, 2008), a Slate magazine best book of the year; and Birds of the Air (2013), a Publishers Weekly pick. He is the editor of The Swallow Anthology of New American Poets, foreword by J. D. McClatchy. His libretto for a chamber opera by David Conte, Firebird Motel, received its premiere in San Francisco in 2003 and was released on CD from Arsis in 2007. His libretto of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Last Tycoon for composer Cyril Deaconoff received a workshop production at West Bay Opera in California in 2010. And his verse dramas On the Rocks and Dirty Dan & Other Travesties have been produced by Verse Theater Manhattan. As an actor and co-founder of Thick Description, a San Francisco theater company, Mr. Yezzi has performed in works by Shakespeare, Shaw, Brecht, Goethe, Williams, and others, in the United States and Europe.
A Stegner Fellow in poetry at Stanford University from 1998 to 2000, his poems and reviews have appeared in The Atlantic, The New Yorker, The Paris Review, The New Republic, The Best American Poetry,The Yale Review, Poetry and elsewhere. A former director of the Unterberg Poetry Center of the 92nd Street Y in New York, he is executive editor of The New Criterion.

Composer: Judith Shatin is a composer and sound artist whose musical practice engages our social, cultural, and physical environments. She draws on expanded instrumental palettes and a cornucopia of the sounding world, from machines in a deep coal mine, to the calls of animals, the shuttle of a wooden loom, a lawnmower racing up a lawn. Timbral exploration and dynamic narrative design are fundamental to her compositional design, while collaboration with musicians, artists and communities are central to her musical life. Shatin’s music has been commissioned by organizations such as the Barlow and Fromm Foundations, the McKim Fund of the Library of Congress, the Lila Wallace-Readers Digest Arts Partners Program, as well as ensembles including Ash Lawn Opera, Da Capo Chamber Players, the Dutch Hexagon Ensemble, newEar,the National and Richmond Symphonies, and many more. Twice a fellow at the Rockefeller Center in Bellagio, she has held residencies at MacDowell, Yaddo, the VCCA, La Cité des Arts (France), Mishkan HaAmanim (Israel), among others. Her Rotunda, a film collaboration with Robert Arnold, won the Macon Film Festival Best Experimental Film Award (2011), while her music for the film Cinnamon, by Kevin J. Everson, has been heard at festivals ranging from Sundance to Munich and Rotterdam. In demand as a master teacher, Shatin has served as BMI composer-in-residence at Vanderbilt University, as master composer at California Summer Music, and as senior composer at the Wellesley Composers Forum. She is William R. Kenan Jr. Professor at the University of Virginia, where she founded the Virginia Center for Computer Music. Her work is featured in the recent book Women of Influence in Contemporary Music, Nine American Composers (Scarecrow Press). A staunch advocate for her fellow composers, she has served as President of American Women Composers and on the boards of the League/ISCM, American Composers Alliance, and International Alliance for Women in Music. She currently sits on the National Council of the Atlantic Center for the Arts.

Last Year’s Winner

Last year’s String Poet Prize was awarded to Jean L. Kreiling for her poem, “Doubt Springs,” which was set to music by composer Eleanor Cory, and performed by Lynn Bechtold and Kirsten Jermé.

Online Submissions

Submissions should be made, along with the entry fee, by 11:59 PM PST on May 20, 2014.
Payment: Please do not use the “Donate” button to send payment for a contest entry. Instead, use the shopping cart on this page to send payment by credit card or PayPal. If your PayPal email address does not match the email used to send your poems, please make note of that in your contest submission email.
Submissions: After completing payment, send a single e-mail with your poem(s) to contest@stringpoet.com. Be sure to include submissions in-line within the email body. If you wish to also include an attachment, the following formats are acceptable: PDF (.pdf), Rich Text (.rtf), Word (.doc), or plain text (.txt). Do not attach .docx files. Include your name and contact information in the body of the email, or as a separate cover page within the attachment — do not put identifying information on the same page as a poetry submission.

Postal Submissions

Send your poem(s) and payment, postmarked on or before May 20^th, 2014 to:
String Poet Prize c/o Long Island Violin Shop
8 Elm Street
Huntington, NY 11743
Checks payable to “String Poet” drawn from a U.S. Bank.   Author’s name and contact information typed on the BACK of each submitted page — do not put identifying information on the front page of a poetry submission. Include a SASE or your email address if you would like to be notified of contest results, or subscribe to String Poet. Hardcopy entries cannot be returned, and will be recycled.

String Poet is pleased to announce the results of the 2013 String Poet Prize, as chosen by final judge George Held. We thank all those who entered, and offer our congratulations to the winner and runners-up!

First Prize:

“Doubt Springs” – Jean L. Kreiling

Second Place:

“Swans and the River” – Gladys Henderson

Third Place:

“Robert Davidson, Trapeze Artist” – Carol Levin

Honorable Mention:

“Her Father’s Ghost” – Katharyn Howd Machan

Look for these poems, along with other String Poet Prize finalists and fine poets in a forthcoming issue of String Poet. Don’t forget to Subscribe to the String Poet Newsletter and Like us on Facebook to get updates about the coming Award Ceremony in November 2013. We hope to see you there!

Feb 26, 2013: Submissions have closed for the 2013 (3^rd annual) String Poet Prize.

Submission Guidelines

Up to 40 lines, all forms accepted. No previously published poems, or poems that have won previous prizes.  Winner receives $200 and composition of original music by professional composer inspired by the winning poem, to be performed live at awards ceremony. Winner and Runners-up published in Spring 2013 issue of String Poet and invited to read at the Award Ceremony in May 2013; all contest submissions are considered for publication in journal.

Entry Fees: $10.00 for up to 3 poems, $15.00 for up to 5 poems, $20 up to 7.
Submissions deadline: February 25, 2013

Final Judge: George Held is a widely published fiction writer, satirist, translator, book reviewer, and a poet who has received seven Pushcart Prize nominations. He was a three-year Fulbright lecturer in Czechoslovakia and has served on the board of The South Fork Natural History Society since 1991. His fifteenth book is After Shakespeare: Selected Sonnets (Červená Barva Press, 2011). His most recently published book is Neighbors: The Yard Critters Too (Filsinger & Company, 2013), the second volume of animal poems for children, illustrated by Joung Un Kim.

Composer: Eleanor Cory‘s work has been recognized by awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, New York State Council on the Arts, New York Foundation for the Arts, Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust, Fromm Foundation of Harvard University, Aaron Copland Fund, Alice M. Ditson Fund of Columbia University, Morse Grant of Yale University, MacDowell Colony, and PSC-CUNY Research Foundation. She has received an American Composers Alliance Recording Award, the Miriam Gideon Award from the International Association of Women in Music, as well as prizes from the Hollybush, Kucyna, and Music of Changes International Competitions, and the Davenport, and New Jersey Guild of Composers Competitions. She has composed musical setting of poems by James Merrill, Marvin Bell, Robert Creeley, Rachel Hadas, Mark Strand, Octavio Paz, W.S. Merwin, David Ignatow, Muriel Rukeyser, and Wallace Stevens. Her poems have been published in Iambs and Trochees and Poetry Porch: Sonnet Scroll. She currently teaches Composition at Mannes College of Music.

Last year’s String Poet Prize was awarded to J. D. Smith for his poem, “Upkeep,” which was set to music by composer Barry Tognolini. Mr. Tognolini performanced his composition, “Tristezza,” following J. D. Smith’s reading of “Upkeep,” to a rapt audience.

Online Submissions

Submissions should be made, along with the entry fee, by 11:59 PM PST on February 25, 2013.
Payment: Use the shopping cart on this page to send payment by credit card or PayPal. Make sure you choose the correct amount based on the number of poems you are submitting. If your PayPal email address does not match the email used to send your poems, please make note of that in your contest submission email.
Submissions: After completing payment, send a single e-mail with your poem(s) to contest@stringpoet.com. Poems should be included in-line as text within the email body. Attachment formats accepted: PDF (.pdf), Rich Text (.rtf), Word (.doc), or plain text (.txt). Include your name and contact information in the body of the email, or as a separate cover page within the attachment.

Postal Submissions

Send your poem(s) and payment, postmarked on or before February 25^th, 2013 to:
String Poet Prize c/o Long Island Violin Shop
8 Elm Street
Huntington, NY 11743
Checks payable to “String Poet” drawn from a U.S. Bank.   Author’s name and contact information typed on the BACK of each submitted page. Include a SASE or your email address if you would like to be notified of contest results, or subscribe to String Poet. Hardcopy entries cannot be returned, and will be recycled.

String Poet is pleased to announce the results of the 2012 String Poet Prize, as chosen by final judge Kim Bridgford. We thank all those who entered, and offer congratulations to the winners, honorable mentions, and finalists.

First Prize:

“Upkeep” – J.D. Smith

Second Place:

“The Strauses Return to Broadway” – Patricia Brody

Third Place:

“Palimpsest: Fez” – Maxine Silverman

Honorable Mentions:

“Mourning at the Kaldi Café” – Carol Louise Munn
“The Taste of Tea” – Muriel Harris Weinstein

Look for these folks, along with other String Poet Prize finalists and fine poets in the forthcoming issue of String Poet, and also see our 2012 String Poet Prize Award Ceremony.

Submission Guidelines

March 29, 2012: 2012 String Poet Prize Results announced.

Feb 25, 2012: Submissions have closed for the 2012 String Poet Prize

Up to 40 lines, all forms accepted.  Contest theme: “Remembrance.” No previously published poems, or poems that have won previous prizes.  Winner receives $200 and composition of original music by professional composer inspired by the winning poem, to be performed live at awards ceremony. Winner and Runners-up published in Spring 2012 issue of String Poet and invited to read at the Award Ceremony on May 25^th; all contest submissions are considered for publication in journal.

Entry Fees: $10.00 for up to 3 poems, $15.00 for up to 5 poems.
Submissions deadline: February 25, 2012

Final Judge: Kim Bridgford. Dr. Bridgford is the director of both the West Chester University Poetry Center and the West Chester Poetry Conference. She is editor-in-chief of Mezzo Cammin, and founder of the Mezzo Cammin Women Poets Timeline Project, designed to become the world’s largest database of women poets. She is the founder of the literary journal Dogwood, and is the author of five collections of poetry, including In The Extreme, winner of the Donald Justice Prize.

Composer: Australian pianist and composer Barry Tognolini has been performing professionally since the age of thirteen, when he became a regular guest on a TV variety program showcasing young talent in Perth, West Australia. Since that time, he has enjoyed a varied and rewarding career, referred to by New Idea magazine as “pianist to the rich and famous.” Barry has performed with Celine Dion in a concert for children in Perth, and with Andrea Bocelli, Sara Brightman, Lara Fabian and Katherine McPhee at an exclusive concert at the Dallas Country Club. Barry has performed on the QE2, has toured with the African Children’s Choir, and has guest starred at the New South Wales Premier’s Concerts in the Sydney Entertainment Center- an event that attracted over thirty thousand patrons. However, his most memorable touring performance was a concert in Tirano — a little village high up in the Italian Alps where his ancestors once lived. Having released previous CDs with Sony Music Australia as well as his own label, Barry’s latest recording project is “Treasure Road,” a 24-track double CD collection featuring both well-known and original compositions.

Last year’s String Poet Prize was selected by finalist judge Patricia Fargnoli, and awarded to Pramila Venkateswaran for her poem, “Kummi Dance,” which was set to music by composer Beth Anderson. At the awards ceremony, judge Patricia Fargnoli gave a reading, along with Ms. Venkateswaran and the other contest finalists. The evening culminated in a performance of Beth Anderson’s “Kummi Dance,” performed by Beth Anderson (piano) and David Wong (violin).