It is with great excitement that we announce the winning poems in the 2024 Kim Bridgford Memorial Sonnet Contest: Individual Sonnet winner “Calling Hours at the Funeral Home”by Jean L. Kreiling, and Sonnet Crown winner “Roughly True” by Barbara Lydecker Crane. They each will be awarded a prize of $500 and are invited to read the pieces in May at Poetry … Read More
Guest Blog Entry by David M. Katz I’m thrilled to announce that I will again be leading The Master Poets Critical Seminar at the Poetry by the Sea Conference, which will be held on May 21 through May 24 in Madison, Conn. The 2023 seminar focused on Marianne Moore; quite logically, this year’s will zero … Read More
As part of our commitment to bringing poetry to a wider audience, we tried to record many panels and readings from the 2023 conference. Here are the Spotlight Readings from Thursday May 25th, 10:30 a.m. You can access the audio file of Mahogany L. Browne (with Max Michael Jacob) here, and the one of Adam … Read More
If you’ve been putting off registering for this year’s Conference, now’s the time. We have two remaining on-site rooms available at the Mercy Center when you register for the week. Plus you have the chance to work with our excellent workshop faculty. Coming to Poetry by the Sea is an easy call. But choosing which of these excellent three- … Read More
It is with great excitement that we announce the winning poems in the 2023 Kim Bridgford Memorial Sonnet Contest: Individual Sonnet winner “Driving North from Florida in March” by Brian Brodeur, and Sonnet Crown winner “after The Planets” by Matthew Moniz. They each will be awarded a prize of $500 and are invited to read … Read More
DRIVING NORTH FROM FLORIDA IN MARCH by Brian Brodeur I think of you out thereon the sandy edge of things—Anthony Hecht, “Message from the City” On viny medians near Fayetteville,spring in reverse begins un-greening trees.Ryegrass recalls its pollen. Creeks re-freeze.A rumor of itself, the nascent yearwithholds its buds and songbirds disappear.Unsalted roads carved into each … Read More
After The Planets by Matthew Moniz with thanks to Gustav Holst Mars Far after all the planets have expired,we’ll look upon our headstone rocks adriftand back at errant dreams which they inspired—to give ourselves a universal gift. That’s if we leave—our ochre neighbor stainsimaginations marching toward those timesof triumph and prestige as our cremainsrepeat … Read More
This year’s Conference is offering participants the chance to sign up for private consultations with a poet known for her metrical acumen—our own Anna M. Evans. The consultations are ideal for poets fine-tuning their grasp of metrics, as well as for poets just starting to use meter and form in their work. Anna can work … Read More
It’s with great excitement that we look forward to welcoming Marilyn Chin as Keynote for the May 23-26 Conference this year. Apart from her exceptional renown as a poet, Chin is also esteemed as a translator of Chinese, Vietnamese, and (along with a co-translator) Japanese poetry. Talking about her book Hard Love Province in a 2015 interview, Chin elucidated some of her … Read More
If you were fortunate enough to catch the recent “She Who Wrote” exhibit at the Morgan Library and Museum in New York City, you saw a remarkable display of texts written by the ancient Mesopotamian high priestess and poet Enheduanna (circa 2300 BCE), the “earliest-named author in world literature.” But that important literary fact wouldn’t have taken you by surprise … Read More
