2nd Annual Lucille Clifton Poetry Prize, 2014

(Now Accepting Submissions)

The Lucille Clifton annual poetry contest, held each spring, honors the prolific work of poet great Lucille Clifton. Widely celebrated for her unpretentious and unapologetic poems, Clifton’s unique free verse was free of punctuation, taut, and always recognizably her. When submitting think: humanness, struggle, adversity, resilience.

“Lucille Clifton’s life and work bears testament and witness to her fierce and courageous innate ability to distill life’s most wondrous and terrible moments into words that sear and resonate. She saw, heard, tasted, felt, and intuited; then spoke the truth, however unfathomable. She chose form and definition carefully; her writing has been described as “spare”, “simple” “powerful” and “empowering”; but it was also strategic and provocative even in it’s simplicity. Her lack of capital letters, minimal punctuation and free verse challenge the reader to dismiss their preconceived literary imprisonment and listen on her human terms. She was a truth-teller above all, and she was celebrated as much because of the power of her work as she was because it was impossible not to love and feel loved by her. Her life, her way of seeing and walking in the world were the backbone of her work. I am her daughter. Her backbone is mine. And yours.”   -Sidney Clifton

Guidelines

Please submit no more than three unpublished poems, no more than five pages in length. No personal information should appear on the poems. The cover sheet should include: poem titles with line counts, author’s contact information and a brief bio. Entries must include a $10.00 reading fee payable via our Paypal donation page. All entries must be submitted or postmarked April 1st- June 15th, 2014. The selected winner will receive $250.00 and publication on our website along with honorable mentions. This year’s final judge will be Nikki Giovanni. Please send electronic submissions via email to: backbonepoetry@gmail.com with the words Lucille Clifton Prize. Please send postal entries to: Backbone Press, Inc. PO Box 51483, Durham, NC 27717-1483. Postal entries will not be returned.

2013 Lucille Clifton Poetry Prize Winners 

>via: http://backbonepress.org/contests/