call for salmon poems!

With the support of a fellowship from the Academy of American Poets, Washington State Poet Laureate Rena Priest is creating an anthology of poetry dedicated to salmon, and is calling for submissions from Washington State writers.

“Salmon are the unsung heroes of our region,” she says. “Adventurous and brave, they swim from their natal rivers out into the perils of the open ocean. Persistent, resilient, and strong, they swim upstream against swift currents for hundreds of miles to return home to spawn and complete the cycle of life.

“Salmon are sacred to my tribe, the Lhaq’temish (Lummi) Nation. We celebrate them in ceremony and song, and they have long been central to our Sche’le’ngen, our way of life. By celebrating salmon through poetry in every corner of the state, I hope to raise goodwill and a feeling of reverence for the salmon, a feeling that my people have felt since time immemorial.

“Seattle-based writer Timothy Egan writes, ‘The Pacific Northwest is simply this: wherever the salmon can get to.’ Before dams were installed, salmon inhabited streams throughout Washington state, even as far inland as Spokane, the Tri-Cities, and beyond. They have been a huge part of our regional identity, and I hope you will submit a poem or two about our iconic wild salmon.”

This project is supported in part by Humanities WA, the Washington State Arts Commission, and the Academy of American Poets. Empty Bowl Press will publish the anthology in 2023.

The submission deadline is September 18, 2022. See the complete guidelines here.

Poem in Your Pocket Day

Throughout the U.S. and Canada, today, Friday, April 29, is Poem in Your Pocket Day. You may always have a poem in your pocket, ready to share, but in case not, the Academy of American Poets and The League of Canadian Poets have put together a 60-page Poem in Your Pocket Day PDF of poems and other resources, including instructions on how to create a folded swan (as a means of sharing a poem).

awards season

A few days ago, we mentioned the Washington State Book Awards, and that Patricia Smith had been awarded the Ruth Lily Poetry Prize. Smith’s award is dazzling, and we should also note the Academy of American Poets prizes, including the Wallace Stevens Award, which went to Toi Derricotte, the Poetry Foundation’s Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowships, the National Book Foundation’s 2021 National Book Awards Longlist for Poetry, and poet Patricia Lockwood, whose debut novel, No One Is Talking About This, has been shortlisted for both the 2021 Booker Prize and the Women’s Prize for Fiction. Congratulations finalists and winners!

Poetry prizes are announced throughout the year. Finalists for the UK’s T.S. Eliot Prize and Canada’s Governor General’s Literary Awards will be announced in mid-October.

meanwhile, in Oregon

Nice article this week in Oregon Live about how Oregon poet laureate Anis Mojgani plans to use the proceeds of a $50,000 fellowship funded by the Academy of American Poets with support from the Mellon Foundation. His plans include a quarterly print newspaper, a poetry telephone line, and a postcard campaign. Read all about it.

Remembering…

The Academy of American Poets (poets.org) has put together a lovely remembrance of some of the poets we lost in 2020. Watch In Memoriam 2020 on YouTube. Not forgotten.

. . . . .
Thank you, Margaret Bikman.

Poets Laureate Fellowships

Amidst plenty of gloomy financial news, the Academy of American Poets has announced awards of $50,000 each to 23 Poets Laureate of states, cities, counties, and the Navajo Nation. Funded by a grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the program is in its second year, with expanded coverage and a change in focus, as poets are subject to travel restrictions and other distancing requirements. You may recall that Claudia Castro Luna’s One River, A Thousand Names project was funded last year.

Cascadia’s sole winner this year is Susan Landgraf, Poet Laureate of Auburn, Washington. A poet and journalist, Landgraf is the author of What We Bury Changes the Ground (Tebot Bach, 2017). She will partner with the Muckleshoot Tribe and Reservation and the City of Auburn to offer poetry workshops at the Tribal School and in the Auburn Public Schools Tribal Programs, as well as for adults and children at the Tribal Center. The project will culminate in a book of participants’ poems, as well as a series of readings on the Reservation, in the City of Auburn, and at the State Capitol.

Congratulations to Susan and all of this year’s grantees!

PIYP Day

To wrap up National Poetry Month, today, Thursday, April 30, 2020, is Poem in Your Pocket Day. The Academy of American Poets has a free viewable/downloadable/printable 62-page PDF that includes poems (American, Canadian, public domain), suggestions for ways to celebrate, and instructions for How to Create a Folded Swan!

shelter in poems

The Academy of American Poets (poets.org) invites the public to join in an initiative for our times: Shelter in Poems.

To participate, select a poem that gives you hope from the Poets.org collection and post a sentence or two about why the poem inspires you on social media with the hashtag #ShelterinPoems. The Academy will be considering responses and gathering the poems and testimonials in a special newsletter and sharing it online each week. Additionally, if you are moved to record a one-minute video of yourself offering the name of the poem and your statement, the Academy will also be selecting videos to share.

Thank you.

In case you missed the announcement of this exceedingly juicy bit of philanthropy, The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has granted $4.5 Million to The Academy of American Poets. Believed to be the largest grant ever made by a philanthropic institution to support poets in the United States, the unprecedented amount will enable The Academy of American Poets to fund its Poets Laureate Fellowship program for the next three years.

In its press release on the grant, Poets.org cites the work of four poets laureate, including Washington State Poet Laureate Claudia Castro Luna.

What a fine gift!

what are you writing about?

If your poetry passion is the current state of our environment, you might want to consider submitting your work for The Treehouse Climate Action Poem Prize. Offered by the Academy of American Poets with generous support from Treehouse Investments, the prize will honor three poets who submit “exceptional poems that help make real for readers the gravity of the vulnerable state of our environment at present.”

Find out more about the Treehouse Climate Action Poem Prize and the complete guidelines.

In a related note… if you are engaged with the topic, the literary journal apt is accepting submissions that address climate change for issue 10 through August 31, 2019. Note that apt publishes long-form work, but for this issue will consider “shorter” work, defined as 1,000 words/100 lines/7 pages minimum for poetry. See the apt submission guidelines here.