“Sumer Is Icumen In,” and with it a new round of poetry contest deadlines. Poets who’ve been working on a manuscript may be interested in the book and chapbook publication competitions, and those who have their eye on publication in a journal or periodical will want to enter the single poem competitions. Whichever route you choose, it’s time to gather your stamps and envelopes, or go for the contests that accept online entries—you’ll notice that many of the contests on this list will take submissions either way.
Required Reading Before You Submit To any Contests:
“What’s Really Wrong with Poetry Book Contests?,” by David Alpaugh
How to Put Together a Poetry Manuscript for Publication
“A Word To the Wise: On Entering Your Poems in Competition,” by Kurt Heintz
“You Do It Because You Love It,” by S.A. Griffin
Related Resources:
More Contest Links
Afghanistan has a long tradition of poetry, both Persian and Pashto—you can read selections from Afghan poets translated into English at these Web sites:
Since the Western invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, US and UK media have paid some attention to poetry’s place in contemporary Afghan society:
Right now, poetry is crossing the cultural divide in both directions—from west to east, with the travels of an American poet in Afghanistan:
from the Detroit MetroTimes:
“Detroit Poet in the War Zone,” by M.L. Liebler
M.L. Liebler is a Detroit performance poet, literary arts activist and Wayne State University professor who has travelled the world teaching poetry. This month he ventured halfway around the world, to Afghanistan, and he has come back with inspiring stories of poetry as the vehicle for intercultural connections: he met with the poets of the Afghan Women’s Writing Project for a workshop in a secret location in Kabul, he used Langston Hughes’s “A Dream Deferred” poem and Eminem’s hip hop lyrics to get Afghan kids writing poems, and he taught the poets of Kandahar “to click their fingers after poems and say ‘dig that!’” He’s posted from Kabul, Jalabad and Kandahar so far—after Kabul, he was forced to suspend blogging for security reasons, but now that he has left Afghanistan his backlogged posts are going up, and readers can keep an eye on the Liebler archive page linked above to catch future installments.
And, not without disjuncture and controversy, poetry is also flowing from east to west, with the UK publication of a book collection, Poetry of the Taliban, in English:
from The Independent (UK):
“Controversial Taliban poetry anthology to be published,” by Andrew Buncombe
“Controversy has erupted over the publication later this week of an anthology of Taliban poetry designed to ‘shed light on who these people actually are.’... Confronted by a barrage of criticism, including condemnation from a former British military commander in Afghanistan, the editors of the volume of 235 poems have defended their project as a way to challenge people’s assumptions.”
from The Guardian (UK):
“Taliban poetry: the gentle, flowery side of the story?,” by Robin Yassin-Kassab
“Poetry of the Taliban, therefore, is a brave and useful project. Published this week, and already denounced in some quarters as ‘self-justifying propaganda,’ it offers a perspective on the conflict through the Other’s eyes, something worth more than a library full of cold analysis.”
from The Huffington Post:
“Taliban Poetry Collection Sparks Controversy,” by John Lundberg
“The book’s editors—two scholars—acknowledged that one strongly voiced complaint they hear is that their book will be giving voice to terrorists.... The poems themselves support both sides of the debate. Some of them rail against the U.S. and its allies, conveying a predictable fanaticism.... Others celebrate love and landscapes, and even convey doubt....”
What are your thoughts on these sorts of poetic conversations between distant and often opposing cultures, dear Readers? We welcome your comments below.
Previous Postings on Poetry as a Medium for Cultural Exchange:
Poetry is a Peace Bridge Across Divided Societies (December 2007)
The Language of Poetry Bridges the Gulf of Cultural Conflict (November 2006)
Poetry Connecting Civilizations in Conflict (Coleman Barks, Rumi and Iran, May 2006)
Britain Chooses a Poem to Represent Earth to Aliens (October 2005)
We’ve added to our anthology of poems about mothers and motherhood for Mother’s Day this year, so you’re sure to find the one classic that's right for your mom. Here are the new additions:
- “Unfolded out of the Folds,” by Walt Whitman (1860)
Unfolded out of the folds of the woman, man comes unfolded, as is always to come unfolded....
- “Nature — the Gentlest Mother is,, ” by Emily Dickinson (#790)
Nature — the Gentlest Mother is,
Impatient of no Child —
The feeblest — or the waywardest —
Her Admonition mild —....
- “Song of the Old Mother, ” by William Butler Yeats (1899)
I rise in the dawn, and I kneel and blow
Till the seed of the fire flicker and glow...
- “Mother Earth, ” by Henry Van Dyke (1909)
Mother of all the high-strung poets and singers departed,
Mother of all the grass that weaves over their graves the glory of the field,
Mother of all the manifold forms of life, deep-bosomed, patient, impassive...
- “The Player Queen, ” by William Butler Yeats (1916)
My mother dandled me and sang,
“How young it is, how young!”
And made a golden cradle
That on a willow swung....
- “Poems Done on a Late Night Car, ” by Carl Sandburg (1916)
...Here is a thing my heart wishes the world had more of:
I heard it in the air of one night when I listened
To a mother singing softly to a child restless and angry in the darkness.
- “My Mother, ” by Claude McKay (1922)
...Float, faintly-scented breeze, at early morn
Over the earth where mortals sow and reap—
Beneath its breast my mother lies asleep.
We’d like to keep adding poems to this collection—you can
submit your own poems here or suggest classics you think we’ve forgotten
in email.
Remember Nadia Anjuman? Poetry is still inextricably linked with death for the women of Afghanistan. In Eliza Griswold’s article for the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, “Why Afghan Women Risk Death to Write Poetry,” we learn the heartbreaking story of a more recent martyr to poetry: Zarmina, whose secret phone calls from her rural village to read poems to Mirman Baheer, the Afghan women’s literary society based in Kabul, were a soul lifeline. She said to her phone-pals in the city, “You are the luckiest people since you can meet with your friends openly.... You can learn from your mistakes and write better poems.” But after she was caught reading love poems on the phone line (and the assumption is apparently always that there is a man on the other end of the line, hence an illicit affair), her brothers beat her and destroyed her notebooks, and two weeks later Zarmina committed suicide by self-immolation. Now Ogai Amail, who answers the secret phone calls in Kabul, takes care to “note down everything—the dates of the poems, the phone numbers, every single thing...”
Arising out of the suppression of women’s voices is an anonymous form of folk poetry, the landai, often heard at gatherings of Mirman Baheer. 
“Landai means ‘short, poisonous snake’ in Pashto, a language spoken on both sides of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. The word also refers to two-line folk poems that can be just as lethal. Funny, sexy, raging, tragic, landai are safe because they are collective. No single person writes a landai; a woman repeats one, shares one. It is hers and not hers. Although men do recite them, almost all are cast in the voices of women.” We understand that Eliza Griswold is working with the women of Mirman Baheer “to translate the landai of Afghanistan’s leading poets, which no one has done since Songs of Love and War: Afghan Women’s Poetry, edited by Sayd Majrouh, who was assassinated in Peshawar in 1988”—and we say Bravo! to that effort. We’d like to read more of these little gems in English.
