2009 Tom Howard Poetry Contest Results

First Prize, $2,000: Rita McGregor, Baby Girl

Second Prize, $1,000: Carmine Dandrea, In the Delhi Station

Third Prize, $500: Tony Peyser, What I Did in the 20^th Century

  Fourth Prize, $250: Susan Katz, The Bowpicker

Five High Distinction Awards of $200 each (in merit order):

Susan Keith, Climbing the Water Tower;

Gisela Vigil, Milk and Cookies for Grandma;

Mary Jean Chan, In Search of Paradise Lost;

Joseph Gorman, A Walk;

Joseph A. Soldati, Lullabies for Tonight.

Seven Most Highly Commended Awards of $100 each (in random order):

Elizabeth Davies, Dry Parched Kisses;

Martin Steele, Single Malt;

Harry Gilleland, The Nature Trail;

Marie Delgado Travis, What If…

Marie Delgado Travis, Beslan;

Joseph Gorman, Soft Summer Rain;

Clyta Coder, No Gift Ever Loved Me More.

VERY HIGHLY COMMENDED ENTRIES: Sharon Auberle, Six Degrees of Separation, plus On Mortality, plus Holding On; A.H. (Tim) Napier, The Factory of Making and Unmaking plus Two Versions Of The River In Free Verse plus Cardinal plus A Heavy Mist in April plus Metaphysics of the River in Spring; The Poet Settle, Camping in the Berkshires; Janet I. Trail, The Writing Teacher; Joseph Gorman, The Road; Martin Steele, Early, Every Morning; Phyllis Jean Green, Don't Blink; Barbara Westwood, Nature of Things; Mary Dennis, The Polar Bear Ward; Joy Gaines-Friedler, Assisted Living; Taiwo Odumosu, Music; Tom Berman, Orchard Path, in autumn; Erna Bennett, Band-i-amir.

HIGHLY COMMENDED ENTRIES (in numerical number of entries):

FIVE HIGHLY COMMENDED ENTRIES: Helen Bar-Lev, The Lake District plus In a Grand Bazaar in Istanbul plus Early Morning Down the Street plus The Photographs on the Wall of the Emergency Centre plus On Houses and Orchards.

FOUR HIGHLY COMMENDED ENTRIES:  Johnmichael Simon, Mermaids plus I Dream of Mother plus Review from Vienna plus Goldfish and Soft Moonlight; Lois Hooge, Young Man plus Old Man plus Medicine Man plus Damaged Man; Marie Delgado Travis, Detour plus Workaholic plus You Are… plus Friends; Joseph Gorman, Petals plus Before Leaving plus Matthew 10:16 plus That Thing That; Frank Salvidio, Not Romeo and Juliet plus On His 76th Birthday plus "remembrance of things past" plus On Seeing Medea.       

THREE HIGHLY COMMENDED ENTRIES: CM Pretorius, Wonderfully Ruined plus Venice plus My Woman; Susan Keith, The Highest Price plus Debbie Reynolds and Me and the Giant Squid plus Letters Home from Camp Windy Wood; Iris Fisher, All In A Word plus The Poetry Tree plus Spirit of Place Past; Martin Steele, After All plus Making Tea plus My Brother Is a Scarecrow; Lee Hedstrom, Magnificent plus Angels plus Time in a Bottle.  

TWO HIGHLY COMMENDED ENTRIES: Elizabeth Davies, Ode to Aung San Suu Kyi plus The Delight of Donkeys; Daniel Aristi, Children of the Rain plus Mighty Little Rickshaw; Richard Grace, If the Wind Were a Lady plus The Rain Check; John Laue, Epiphany at Seacliff Beach plus Volcanoes National Park: Hawaii; Sherwin Kaufman, Revelation plus Child's Play; Hans Jorg Stahlschmidt, Immigrant plus Thinning; Meryl Raw, Solitary Man plus Innocent Mule; Nathalie Goral, Momma, If You Only Knew plus Birthday Girl; David Ray, What They Are Watching plus The Bicycle Boy in Jaipur; Judith Ford, Colorado Poem plus How To Leave Your Marriage; Mary Jean Chan, Release plus The Music of Silence; Taiwo Odumosu, Birth plus A World and Another; Sandra McQueen, Black Heart Seam plus First, Complete the Outer Edges; Morney Wilson, From an Alley plus Lost at Sea; M. Lee Alexander, Houdini Kiss plus The Grocery Game; Jennifer Chapis, Delay plus Backpacking in the Rain; Catherine Strisik, Roy plus Raw Silk; Kenneath Pearce, Eulogy plus The Road Taken; John F. McMullen, Cashing a Check plus Backup; Rex D. Couch, Ode to Golden Leaves plus Winter Water; Elizabeth Ciampa Leuzzi, Rosaria Ortolani Barrile (1911-1992) plus Voice; Ruth Sabath Rosenthal, Riding Past the Museum plus Transition; Gisela Ruebsaat, Genie plus Bedtime.

HIGHLY COMMENDED ENTRIES: A.H. (Tim) Napier, CANIS MAJOR: Dog Star: Talking To My Dog On A Late Night Walk; Shannon Pace, Movements; CB Follett, Bull Kelp; Mary Sloan Healey, Timber Town; Shirley A. Plummer, from Memories of Childhood (3); Jerrick Boone, Life and Death; Penelope A. Thoms, Market Day; Simon Peter Eggertsen, Things Missed; Jane Danko, The St John; Justin Achneepineskum, Shakespeare of the North; William Snyder, Wedding of the Peasant Girl; Flora Terbi-Ollennu, Whirlwinds of Change; Mark Dunn, Flea Market; Dr Andre Levi, Mary Pickford, Charles Chaplin, Rudolph Valentino and Me; Kat Bernhardt, Kairos; John Elliott, Gripping the Stone; Jaan Jensen, Little bird sounds; S.E. Ingraham, And No Mother There Did Dwell; Stefano Bruno, From the River to the Sea; Stacey Dye, Tankas 1-5; Iris Dan, With My Parents at the Cows' Ball; Saskia Pouw, The ABC's of the Great Turning; Ali Tevfik Tokdemir, A Prompt Encounter; Maranda Haynes, Orange; Brooks Robards, Day of the Monarchs; Zyskandar A. Jaimot, Le Sel Noir (the black salt); Pam Wagg, How To Read a Poem; Phillip Donnell, Lingering; Miles Merrill, Night’s Knows; Wing-chi Chan, A Fugue of Tone Rhyming; Ronald Petty, Voice from the Grave; Steve Earls, Under the Concrete Slabs; Marie Delgado Travis, For You, Distant Lover; Tom Berman, Spring Tide; Erna Bennett, Bird in the Afternoon; Adrienne Colman, My Life with Boys; Denise DeVaney, Luna Considers the Curve of the World; Joy Gaines Friedler, The Polish Café Karen Gurth, "nonsense" Nicolai Stricker, The Stray; Toni Payne, Deep in the Forest; Joseph Petty, Indigo; Barbara Malpass, The Sixth Step on the Pyramid of Needs?; Tyler Lacoma, Lizard Time; Amber Rose, My Sunshine Has Gone; Elizabeth MacDonald Burrows, The Oak Tree by the Old Mill Pond; Lynn Veach Sadler, Seeing the Flowers on Horseback; Desimber Wattleton, When History Was Made; Carole Davis, A Poet's Rite; Barbara Westwood, Garden of Eden; Joanne Moss, A Mistress Laments; Perry Tait, Hope; Harry Gilleland, My Mother's Rodent Phobia; Osmond Donald Benoliel, Archeology of My Mind; George Amabile, untitled; Paulette Sharon Stewart, People are complex, fickle; Phyllis Jean Green, Every Spring Passes; Caroline Kano, Song of Hope; Noble Collins, Owl at My Window; Clive Singleton, Walking to a Wedding; Marley Teter, Goat Song; Tim Porter, Phantom of the Minimum Wage; Suzette M. Bogrand, Beached Tales; Art Schwartz, The Woman Standing Quietly Beside Your Bed; William Childress, The Ugly Baby; Lawrence Anthony De Graw, The Battle of Savo Island (Guadalcanal); Rachel Hammerman, Stitched with High Wire; Frances Flatley, Not Quite Yet.

COMMENDED ENTRIES: Christy K. Miller, Sky Mercy plus Grains of Sand plus Falling Leaves plus Beautiful; Moira France, The First Snow plus Lonely Building; James W.B. Church, Jr., Old Man Flynn Is Dead plus The Weaver; Gerard Neda, Oh Poet!, James Francis Cahillane, Monsters; Sally Clark, Homesteading in Paradise; Tonni Riley, Are We There Yet?; Heather Koenig, A Part of Me; Carol Metz, Cardinal's Lot; Sonya Burrell, Mist; Susan Keith, Psalm for Doctor Ginsberg; Aliene Pylant, Restoration; A. Binh Ho, Milk and Honey; Harry Gilleland, Dog Pack Attack; Freeman Chatman, Winnie; Elizabeth Davies, Dead Poets; Lee Hedstrom, Messages; Marie Delagado Travis, Biopsy; Marley Teter, Home for Christmas; Joseph Gorman, Like You Said, plus At the window plus Thanks; A.H. (Tim) Napier, LIBRA: Balancing Acts I, II, III plus A Metaphysics Of The River; Ewa Omahen, The Dream Boy; Ted O. Badger, A Solitary Journey plus Rain Stirs Memories; Doreen Stobbe, Third Child; Faye Williams Jones, Seasons Marked by the Pear Tree; Trudy Wells, A young girl trapped in an old body… Rachel-Marie Boughton, Far Away and Long Ago; Sherwin Kaufman, A Child’s Vision; Cecil Simpson, A Church of Dreams; Jacqueline M. Cartel, Just One More Story plus The Raven; Frank Salvidio, Then and Now; Art Schwartz, Lola High Upon My Shoulders; William Childress, In the Gila Monster Den; Charlene Fisk, Slipping Away; John B. Lee, The Men with Moondust Under Their Nails plus The Beauty of the Birdless Cage; Jim Greenwald, Seen in a Shadow; Harriet Guthrie, Love Gifting.

The judges heartily congratulate all the poets on the above lists. In fact, we would like to thank everyone who entered this contest. The quality of work entered for the 2009 Contest was truly outstanding.

These winning lists have also been posted on http://writeway.exactpages.com and http://writing-events.blogspot.com

The Annual $5,550 Margaret Reid Poetry Prize for Traditional Verse is open! The $5,550 Tom Howard Short Story, Essay and Prose Contest is also now open for entries, but will close on March 31, so now is the time to lodge your story or essay before the judges are swamped by the last-month rush! 

And also open of course is the current $5,550 Tom Howard Poetry Contest for Verse in All Styles and Genres.

As you know, these Newsletters are issued only twice a month (usually on the first and fifteenth days). Sometimes it's necessary to get information across more quickly, so I've started a blog, http://writing-events.blogspot.com  

In addition to http://writing-events.blogspot.com, I've got some other good news, not only to help contestants in all three of our competitions, but to improve writing skills in the community generally. The Searchwarp website has started a page of Advice Columns and I've been appointed the Writing Advice Editor. You can send me your questions by using the SearchWarp Advice Column 'ask for advice' form at http://SearchWarp.com/Advice-Columns/Prose-and-Poetry-Advice

The website for the Tom Howard Poetry Contest is http://tomhowardpoetry.bravepages.com

The latest Margaret Reid poetry anthology is Love & City Dreaming: Poems by Margaret Havill Reid. Margaret's range and versatility in this book provide an excellent guide to the verse we are seeking for the Margaret Reid Prize.

You'll also find plenty of rousing titles and attention-getting poems in our previous anthologies of winning entries such as SAILING IN THE MIST OF TIME: Award-Winning Poems in which 108 award-winning and commended poems are gathered together in a large-format, 196-page book!

For more information, I recommend my Write Ways to WIN WRITING CONTESTS: How To Join the Winners' Circle for Prose and Poetry Awards, If you've been wasting your time and money sending great stories or magnificent poems to Contests that immediately place them in the reject basket, here's a book to set you on the right path.

This year, the prize pool for our prose and poetry contests has been increased to $5,550 (including a First Prize of $3,000). Entry fees have not been raised. The entry fee for the prose contest remains at $15 for each short story or essay up to 5,000 words in length. There are ten cash prizes in all, but the judges do reserve the right to award extra cash prizes if they so desire. For the last prose contest, the judges awarded no less than $500 in additional prizes, bringing the total prize pool up to $5,850 instead of the advertised $5,350!

To enter your poems in our current poetry contests, you will find full information at http://margaretreid.exactpages.com OR http://poetrycontests.exactpages.com. You will note that although the prize-money has been increased, entry fees do remain at $7 for every 25 lines.

Unlike almost all other poetry contests, we impose no limits on the number of lines or number of poems you may submit.

You can also visit the home page of http://www.winningwriters.com and click on the contests at the top left of the screen.

As stated above, the Tom Howard Short Story, Essay & Prose Contest is open. Entries will close on March 31, 2010. Again, let me make it clear at once that we are seeking entries in ALL categories, including "literary" fiction, but most particularly we would like to award prizes to popular, everyday, mainstream stories, essays and prose, as even a casual glance at our anthologies of winning and commended entries such as Keep Watching the Skies! An Anthology of Prize-Winning Short Stories will soon make plain. You'll find full details at http://shortstorycontest.0catch.com

One of the key recommendations in my Write Ways to WIN WRITING CONTESTS is that you take a look at some of the entries that have won prizes in previous contests. This will give you some idea of the types and varieties of stories and prose pieces that have won prizes in the past. The books I recommend here are the two "Watching" books: "Watching the Skies" above, and WATCHING TIME: Anthology of Prizewinning Essays & Short Stories.

And finally I notice Amazon are still selling the new, expanded edition of "Write Ways..." for only $11.25 (which is considerably less than the original edition, even though the new edition has more pages and lots more valuable information): Write Ways to WIN WRITING CONTESTS: How To Join the Winners' Circle for Prose and Poetry Awards, NEW EXPANDED EDITION

Keep writing on! Persistence is often the key to success. I don't know how many times I submitted my story, "Fan-Fan", to competitions before it finally won First Prize (against over 600 other entries) in the prestigious Southern Cross Contest in 2002!