Kent County Residents Of all Ages Invited To Enter Dyer-Ives Poetry Competition

Grand Rapids MI

24 March, 2021

6:27 PM

Description

From Grand Rapids Public Library: About the Annual Kent County Dyer-Ives Poetry Competition The Dyer-Ives Poetry Competition was started in 1968 by poet James Allen at the urging of John Hunting, the founder of the Dyer-Ives Foundation, to encourage excellence in writing and to provide recognition for local work of high quality. The annual contest is open to poets ages 5 through adult who reside in Kent County. Submissions are accepted April 1 – April 30, 2021. Winners will be announced in June. Winners selected in different categories have their poems published in Voices, receive a cash award, and participate in a reading. Funded by: Eligibility Open to Kent County, Michigan residents of all ages. Open to students attending classes within Kent County, including GVSU. Free to enter. One poem per person will be accepted. The poem must be original and unpublished. Submissions are accepted April 1 – April 30, 2021. Resources for Teachers Our 2021 Teacher's Guide is coming soon. 2021 National Judge Safia Elhillo Safia Elhillo is the author of The January Children (University of Nebraska Press, 2017), which received the Sillerman First Book Prize for African Poets and an Arab American Book Award, Girls That Never Die (forthcoming from One World/Random House), and the novel in verse Home is not a Country (Make Me A World/Random House, 2021). With Fatimah Asghar, she is co-editor of the anthology Halal If You Hear Me (Haymarket Books, 2019). Sudanese by way of Washington, DC, Safia received the 2015 Brunel International African Poetry Prize, and was listed in Forbes Africa's 2018 "30 Under 30." Her work has been translated into several languages and her commissions include Under Armour, Cuyana, and ILIA Beauty. In 2018, she was awarded a Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation. Safia is currently a Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University and lives in Oakland. Photograph by Aris Theotokatos Voices Publication Voices is published annually to highlight the winners of the Dyer-Ives Poetry Competition. Check out the winning poems from 2020. 2020 Winners Elementary School, Grades K – 2 1st Place: Naomi James, "Love is Like Fire" 2nd Place: Olivia Cecilia-Brundin, "Dream" Elementary School, Grades 3 – 4 1st Place: William Aupperlee, "The Wilderness" 2nd Place: Charlotte Vos, "What If?" Middle School, Grades 5 – 6 1st Place: Megan Middlestadt, "Forget" 2nd Place: Carolina Yeung, "Pink is Everywhere" Honorable Mention: MaKenna Moore, "The message that broke me" Middle School, Grades 7 – 8 1st Place: Kaydence Gonzalez, "Raspberries and Sugar Plums" 2nd Place: Dia Sriram, "My Friends on a Typical Night" Honorable Mention: Isabella Tardani, "Numbers" High School, Grades 9 – 10 1st Place: Zoe Paskewicz, "teeth" 2nd Place: Shakhira Seawood, "Sirens" 3rd Place: Samarrah Garrison, "The dark scares you, admit it" Honorable Mention: Chloe Earegood, "Sepia" Honorable Mention: Emily A. K., "Waiting for the Clockmaker" High School, Grades 11 – 12 1st Place: Haleigh Colombo, "You Had a Bench that was Covered in Straw" 2nd Place: Hope Donovan, "Rare Quartz" 3rd Place: Cecelia Brooke, "Unraveling Hours" Honorable Mention: Halle Mikula, "Bambi Lives in Montenegro" Honorable Mention: Lauren Davis, "Soundlessness" Undergraduate 1st Place: Jamie Yonker, "How To Mourn Someone Still Breathing" 2nd Place: Frankie Spring, "[hipster shit]" 3rd Place: Daria Hayward, "Sounds of Starvation" Honorable Mention: Alaina Hefferan, "A Good Read" Honorable Mention: Erin Dwan, "Half a Line" Adult 1st Place: Michaeleen Kelly, "Marcus Aurelius Leaves his (Stoic) Heart in Oakland" 2nd Place: Tina Anderson, "Moon Phases" 3rd Place: Michael Mohan Joshua, "A Moving Scene" Honorable Mention: Jamie Roelofs, "Emphysema" Honorable Mention: Kat Neis, "Perihelion" Questions? If you have questions about the competition, email us or call 616.988.5400. This press release was produced by Grand Rapids Public Library. The views expressed here are the author's own.