The 2012 Frost Farm Prize
The Trustees of the Robert Frost Farm in Derry, NH, and the Hyla Brook Poets invite submissions for its 2nd Annual The Frost Farm Prize for metrical poetry. The winner will walk away with $1,000 and an invitation, with honorarium, to read as part of The Hyla Brook Reading Series at the Robert Frost Farm in Derry in the summer of 2012.
The inaugural winner in 2011 was Sharon Fish Mooney of Coshocton Ohio for her blank verse poem, “Dimly Burning Wicks.” The poem will appear in the 2012 edition of The Evansville Review.
“The writing of metrical verse – the use of rhyme and/or meter – is a precise and challenging craft and we want to celebrate this art form by creating The Frost Farm Prize,” said Robert W. Crawford, co-founder of the Hyla Brook Poets and a Frost Farm Trustee.
Submission guidelines are available at: http://on.fb.me/2012FrostFarmPrize
Complete Frost Farm Prize Guidelines:
Poems must be original, unpublished and metrical (any metrical form). No translations. There is no limit to the number of poems entered by an individual, but an entry fee of $5 U.S. per poem must accompany the submission (entry fees from outside the United States must be paid in cash or by check drawn on a U.S. bank). You are welcome to submit a poem sequence (a crown of sonnets for example) but each poem will be judged individually -- please send in an entry fee for each poem in the sequence. Make checks payable to the "Trustees of the Robert Frost Farm." Please type the author's name, address, phone number and e-mail address on the back of each entry. Entries will be submitted to the judge anonymously.
Deadline: Postmarked by April 1, 2012
Send entries to:
Robert Crawford
The Frost Farm Prize
280 Candia Rd.
Chester, NH 03036
Enclose a SASE for notification of the contest results. These are the complete guidelines. For more information, please see http://on.fb.me/2012FrostFarmPrize or join the Hyla Brook Poets Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/HylaBrookPoets
Inaugural Frost Farm Prize Winner Announced
The Trustees of the Robert Frost Farm in Derry, NH, and the Hyla Brook Poets are pleased to announce the winner of the inaugural Frost Farm Prize is Sharon Fish Mooney of Coshocton Ohio for her blank verse poem, "Dimly Burning Wicks."
The new metrical poetry prize was judged by award-winning writer and editor William Baer. Mooney receives $1,000 and will appear as a featured reader at The Hyla Brook Reading Series at the Robert Frost Farm in June. Her winning poem will be published in The Evansvillle Review. The judge said of her work: "Dimly Burning Wicks" is a lovely blank verse poem about loss and gratitude. Carefully crafted, this sadly atmospheric poem is especially evocative given its meditative tone and its telling details."
Mooney is the author of Alzheimer’s, Caring for Your Loved One, Caring for Yourself and other books and articles on health and aging issues. An ekphrastic sonnet after van Gogh’s The Harvest, won the Y–City Writers Conference award for poetry (2009). She has lectured on poetry and dementia and was a semi–finalist for the Richard Wilbur Award (2011). Mooney teaches nursing research and gerontology on–line for Regis University, Denver, CO and Indiana Wesleyan University. She has an undergraduate degree in nursing from Alfred University and an MS and PhD from the University of Rochester in New York State.
"We were extremely pleased with the quality and quantity of the entries –– especially since this was our first year," said Robert W. Crawford, co–founder of the Hyla Brook Poets and a Frost Farm Trustee. "We received 352 entries from around the USA and Canada (and one from Ireland–can’t forget Ireland!). Metrical poetry is alive and well."
Baer read all the entries and, in addition to selecting the winner, chose four other poems for special recognition as finalists:
- "Walking in August with my Grandniece," by Carol Firth of Sacramento, CA.
- "Never Mind," by Michael Cantor of Newbury, MA.
- "The Need for Clouds," by Jean L. Kreiling of Bridgewater, MA.
- "Woolgathering" by Sharon Fish Mooney of Coshocton, OH.
About the Frost Farm’s Hyla Brook Poets
The Frost Farm was home to the poet and his family from 1900-1911. Crawford and co-founder Bill Gleed started The Hyla Brook Poets group in 2008 as a monthly poetry workshop. In March 2009, the monthly Hyla Brook Reading Series launched with readings by emerging poets as well as luminaries such as Maxine Kumin, David Ferry, Wesley McNair, and Rhina Espaillat.