2008 Sunken Garden Poetry Chapbook Competition

First Prize: $1,000. Chapbook publication by Tupelo Press, 30 free copies and a feature reading in the Sunken Garden Poetry Festival, summer 2009.

Second Prize: $400. Introductory reading in the Sunken Garden Poetry Festival, summer 2009.

Final Judge: Jeffrey Levine, Artistic Director, Sunken Garden Poetry Festival, and Editor-in-Chief, Tupelo Press.

Deadline: Entries must be postmarked between August 15 and October 15, 2008. Winners to be announced January 1, 2009.

Reading fee: $20 payable by check to Hill-Stead Museum, to benefit the 2009 Sunken Garden Poetry Festival.

Eligibility: Poets featured in the Festival 1998–2006 are ineligible. Translations and previously self-published books are ineligible. Employees of, and authors previously published by, Tupelo Press, Inc. are ineligible. Previously published poems with proper acknowledgment are acceptable.

Guidelines: Submit 20–32 pages (no more than one poem per page) plus self-addressed, stamped envelope (SASE) and $20 reading fee. Manuscripts should be paginated consecutively, with a table of contents and acknowledgments page, and bound with a clip. Include two cover pages, one with title only, and a second with your name, address, telephone numbers, email address, and title of the manuscript. Your name must not appear elsewhere on the manuscript. Manuscripts are judged anonymously. No manuscripts will be returned. Simultaneous submissions to other publishers are permitted. Notify Hill-Stead by email at poetry@hillstead.org if manuscript is accepted elsewhere.

Mail manuscript, entry fee and SASE to:

Artistic Director, Sunken Garden Poetry Festival
Hill-Stead Museum
35 Mountain Road
Farmington, CT 06032

Hill-Stead Museum, a non-profit 501(c)(3) corporation, adheres to the Contest Code of Ethics adopted by the Council of Literary Magazines and Presses.

Download Guidelines (PDF)

Adult National Competition Winners 2004–2006

2006

First Place: Renée Ashley for The Museum of Lost Wings. "...tight, resonant, lyrical, edgy... marked by paradox and reversals of linguistic expectation." (Martha Collins, final judge)
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Second Place: John Surowiecki for Bolivia Street
"...clarity, economy, transformative imagery and wit." (Martha Collins, final judge)

2005

First Place: Brad Davis for Short List of Wonders
“… a manuscript of consistent depth and quality…”
(Dick Allen, final judge)
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2004

First Place: Suzanne Cleary for Blue Cloth
“Here are poems that attend equally to the tactile, ‘beautiful surfaces’ of the day to day and the ideas those surfaces cannot help but generate. I admire especially the intelligence that is everywhere apparent…” (Bob Cording, final judge)
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