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ANGELS WITHOUT WINGS FDN | 
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topowl1936@gmail.com |
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amykitchenerfdn@hotmail.com | ||
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For the first time in its 18-year history, the National Annual Senior Poets Laureate Poetry Competition for American poets age 50 is accepting poems via e-mail on an “enter now/pay entry fee later” basis. Why the change from our former hard-copy-only policy? Because so many poets asked if we accept electronic submissions we decided to give it a try. I am handling the hard-copy submissions, which had arrived from 15 states and one foreign country by press time. However, Vera-Jane Goodin Schultz, co-sponsor in Missouri, who is collecting the electronical submissions, reported getting only six entries from two states by press time. If you are one of the poets who advised you'd prefer to enter electronically, you may submit to Vera-Jane at mysterywtr@sbcglobal.net. Entry fees must be sent separately to me by snail mail and, upon receipt, I will notify you by e-mail that your poems have been activated in the contest. Specific easy-to-follow details apply, so check the rules before submitting. It's as easy as 1-2-3. Just click on our web site and go to “Contest—Senior Poets Laureate” on the home page menu. The link to our web site is shown at the bottom of this message. |
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As this year's SPL Contest Administrator, I am now comfortably settled in my new home in beautiful Monterey Bay, California, following a major move from Missouri last year. Snail-mail entries have arrived from remote places where news of the SPL contest is reaching many grassroots poets for the first time. That's because I am compiling a list of e-mail addresses and sending Press Releases to editors of online newspapers from the remote back woods of Appalachia to the frozen tundra around the North Pole, and from midtown Manhattan to bustling San Francisco. We have never had entries representing all 50 states, so maybe 2010 will be a nationwide or even international “first” for America's senior poets and their wonderful poetry. By the time I finish e-mailing press releases next week, between 3,500 and 4000 news sources will have received copies--without a single postage stamp being affixed! One of our international senior poets was recently interviewed in Israel, and then the broadcast was repeated in England. America's senior poets are becoming recognized all around the world. I find it awesome—just like the poets. Check for yourself. Read the 2009 winners' works by visiting our web site and clicking on “Golden Words.” Then, whether you have entered the contest since its inception, or are just discovering the Senior Poets Laureate Poetry Competition for the first time, choose the poems you will submit--via poet's choice e-mail or snail mail. Deadline is 6/30/10.
May the muse be with you. | ||
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wins Native American Poet Laureate Award 
Dr. Carl B. Reed, 73, chiropractor of Altus, Okla., won the 2010 White Buffalo Native American Poet Laureate Award for his prose poem “The Poet and I.” Dr. Reed, who is on the Cherokee Roll, is father of five children. He has been a Chiropractor since 1959. Amy Kitchener's Angels Without Wings Fdn., sponsor of the literary contest honoring the Great Spirit, presented Dr. Reed with $100 and a certificate. Other special honors were given by judges Barbara Callahan Quin (aka LittleCrow WalkingEagle) and Yvonne Londres (aka Dances with Poetry) to runners up Barbara Youngblood Carr and Dr. Charles A. Stone, both of Austin, Tex., who received the White Buffalo Calf Award. 
A chapbook containing the winners, and responses to the Sept. 2009 challenge in which readers submitted impressions about this “Unknown Namesake” from 1912 by photographer Edward S. Curtis, will soon be published by Spirit Streams. For further information, send e-mail to spiritstreams@ymail.com All three winning poems may be viewed on the White Buffalo page at the chapbook publisher's web site at: http://spiritstreams.webs.com/whitebuffalo.htm | Sixteen he was when he first came to me. A Brave was with him, but he I was never to see. Manhood was becoming apparent, as his girth was about the same as mine. The scars here and there revealed that he, like I, had seen some time. Out to prove his Self, he sat beneath me, bow in hand. My body supported his, and he mine, to some degree. I felt his weight and began to know something of this man. He stayed awhile and was gone. I, of course, stayed on. Seasons passed and back he came, sure of step and changing some. A strength was there that had not been before, power he had and I, I had some more. The years passed, as they must, and when he came and when he left, he would give me a pat, an eye and sometimes, a word. Sixty years of this and we both were bent, and this time he came his hair was white and he came alone; his friend was gone. He carried paper and pen instead of bow and we knew a kinship, a sense of Being. Verse he wrote about his life, and in his words were Me, his life, the friend, Eternity. All this time I thought him just a man, as I a tree, but he was more and he Immortalized me. As he left, for we knew the last time, he shed a tear and said to me, "You've given me shelter, strength and friendship; I wish you consciousness." I dropped a leaf and it touched his ear; he turned and smiled and walked away. Our day was almost done, but we were One, The Poet and I ... Dr. Carl B. Reed |