2010 Sunken Garden Poetry Prize

First Prize: $1,000. Chapbook publication by Hill-Stead Museum, 15 free copies and a feature reading in the Sunken Garden Poetry & Music Festival, summer 2010.

Second Prize: $300. Introductory reading in the Sunken Garden Poetry & Music Festival, summer 2010.

Competition Judge: Clare Rossini, poet and Assistant Professor of English, Trinity College.

Deadline: Entries must be postmarked between August 15 and October 15, 2009. Winners to be announced January 1, 2010.

Reading fee: $25 payable by check to Hill-Stead Museum, to benefit the 2010 Sunken Garden Poetry & Music Festival.

Eligibility
• Previous winners of the Sunken Garden Poetry Prize are ineligible
• Poets featured in the Festival 1999–2009 are ineligible
• Translations and previously self-published books are ineligible
• Previously published poems with proper acknowledgment are acceptable.

Guidelines:
• Submit 20–32 pages (no more than one poem per page) and $25 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 number(s), 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 and entry fee 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)
See past winners

Sunken Garden Poetry Prize Winners 2004–2010

2010

First Place: Ginny Lowe Connors for Under the Porch
"...the poet's eye is sharp and true, and her sense of form beautifully honed, so the epiphanies of these poems are found both in their insight and their music." (Clare Rossini, competition judge)

Second Place: Kate Lebo for Sugarspill, Washington
"These poems crackle with energy. The imagination leaps from image to unexpected image with admirable spryness. The voice of the poet is intimate, with an attractive candor, and the music of the lines often mesmerizing." (Clare Rossini, competition judge)

2008/09

First Place: Don Thompson for Back Roads
"...absolutely stunning, unified... deeply sensitive, responsive to the natural world..." (Gray Jacobik, competition judge)

Second Place: Kim Roberts for Exhibitionist
"...beautifully crafted, with a strong range of approaches to form and fascinating materials." (Gray Jacobik, competition judge)

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)

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)

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)