Submission Guidelines

All forms accepted, 40 lines max per poem. No previously published poems, or poems that have won previous prizes.  Winner receives $1000, publication in String Poet, and composition of original music by professional composer inspired by the winning poem, to be performed at the Awards Ceremony in September 2015. Winner and Runners-up published in Winter 2015 issue of String Poet and invited to read at the Awards Ceremony. All contest submissions are considered for publication in journal. String Poet does not solicit poems solely on the subject of music.  There is no theme for submissions.  Reading the journal archives is a great way to become familiar with the type of work that String Poet publishes.

Entry Fee: $15.00 — include up to 5 poems, up to 40 lines per poem
Submissions deadline: May 22, 2015
Submissions can be made on-line, or by post.

Final Judge: Bruce Guernsey is Distinguished Professor Emeritus at Eastern Illinois University where he taught creative writing and American Literature for twenty-five years. He has also taught at William and Mary, Johns Hopkins, the University of New Hampshire, and Virginia Wesleyan College where he was the poet in residence for four years. A graduate with honors from Colgate University, he holds M.A.’s from the University of Virginia and Johns Hopkins and a PhD from New Hampshire, writing his dissertation on tools as metaphor in Robert Frost’s poetry.

Bruce’s poems have appeared in well-known publications such as Poetry, The Atlantic, American Scholar, and many of the quarterlies. His work has also appeared in more diverse places like Cat Fancy, The Journal of Medical Opinion, and Yankee. His books of poetry include Lost Wealth(Basilisk Press, 1974), January Thaw (U. of Pittsburgh Press, 1982), The Lost Brigade (Water Press and Media, 2004), and New England Primer (Cherry Grove Collections, 2008). His selected poems collection, From Rain: Poems, 1970-2010, was published by Ecco Qua Press in 2012. He is also the author of seven chapbooks.

His honors include fellowships in poetry from the NEA, the Illinois Arts Council, and the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. He is a “Featured Poet” on the Illinois Poet Laureate Web Site, and former US Poet Laureate, Ted Kooser, has selected five of his poems for the international column, “American Life in Poetry.” His residency awards include the NEA Fellowship at the MacDowell Colony in 2011, as well as past residencies at Ragdale, the Hawthornden Castle in Scotland, and Norton Island off the coast of Maine. The recipient of Fulbright Senior Lectureships in American poetry to Portugal and Greece, he has also twice sailed around the world as a faculty member with Semester at Sea.

In 2006, Bruce was invited to edit The Spoon River Poetry Review through the winter/spring issue of 2010. The magazine received an Illinois Arts Council Literary Award for both 2008 and 2009. He is the founding editor and former letterpress printer of Penyeach Press which recently published Mapping the Line: Poets on Teaching (2013), a collection of classroom tested essays on poetry writing by some of the country’s best poet/teachers.

Bruce’s own prose has also found publication in a variety of magazines, including War, Literature, and the Arts, The Virginia Quarterly Review, Fly Rod & Reel, and Dappled Things. His essay, “The Raven’s Gift”, won the creative nonfiction award from the literary magazine Flyway. His memoir The Sunburned Daughter has been serialized throughout 2014 by the on-line journal, The Wild River Review.

For his teaching, Dr. G. was awarded seven faculty excellence awards while at EIU, and in 1992 was awarded the State of Illinois Board of Governors’ Distinguished Professor Award, the highest honor offered in that state system. He was also twice nominated for the Carnegie Institute United States Professor of the Year.

He and his wife, the artist and jeweler Victoria Woollen-Danner, divide their time between Charleston, Illinois, and their home in Bethel, Maine. Together, they have five children and four granddaughters, plus a variety of dogs and cats (the latter all with Boston Red Sox’ names).

Composer: Steven R. Gerber was born in 1948 in Washington, D.C. and now lives in New York City. He received degrees from Haverford College and from Princeton University, where he received a 4-year fellowship. His composition teachers included Robert Parris, J. K. Randall, Earl Kim, and Milton Babbitt.

Two CDs of Gerber’s orchestral works were released on major labels in 2000. Chandos issued his Symphony No. 1, Dirge and Awakening, Viola Concerto, and Triple Overture, played by the Russian Philharmonic Orchestra under Thomas Sanderling, with Lars Anders Tomter, viola, and the Bekova Sisters Trio. KOCH International Classics, under a grant from the Aaron Copland Fund for Music, released his Violin Concerto, Cello Concerto, and Serenade for String Orchestra, played by the National Chamber Orchestra under Piotr Gajewski, with soloists Kurt Nikkanen and Carter Brey. After the American premiere of his Violin Concerto at the Concert Hall of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in 1995 by Nikkanen and the National Chamber Orchestra under Gajewski, the Washington Post called it “a major addition to the contemporary violin repertoire: lyrical, passionate, beautifully tailored to the instrument’s character and capabilities…Gerber has revived the spirit of romanticism in this work, with a strong sense of tonal melody and of the dramatic effects and surprises still possible in traditional forms…one of the year’s most memorable events.”

Recent works of Gerber’s include a Viola Concerto written for Yuri Bashmet and premiered by Bashmet at his summer festival in Tours, France; String Quartets No. 4 and 5, written respectively for the Fine Arts and Amernet String Quartets; “Spirituals” for clarinet and string quartet, commissioned by Concertante Chamber Players for performances in 2000 at the Library of Congress and Merkin Hall (NYC) and in Harrisburg; a Clarinet Concerto for Jon Manasse, premiered by him with the National Philharmonic Orchestra under Maestro Piotr Gajewski, and “Fanfare for the Voice of A-M-E-R-I-C-A,” commissioned to celebrate VOA’s 60th anniversary, and premiered at the VOA auditorium on a 9/11 memorial concert in 2003. The Fanfare has since then been performed by the Wheeling Symphony, the Omaha Symphony, the University of Tennessee (Knoxville) Orchestra, and by the National Philharmonic Orchestra at the new Music Center at Strathmore as part of the 2005 ASOL convention.

In 2007 Arabesque released a CD of three of Gerber’s orchestral works, Spirituals for string orchestra, Clarinet Concerto, and Serenade Concertante, featuring the St. Petersburg State Academic Symphony, conducted by Vladimir Lande, and clarinetist Jon Manasse. In 2009 Naxos released on its American Masters series a CD of nine solo and chamber works of Gerber, all featuring violinist Kurt Nikkanen, and including violinists Cho-Liang Lin and Cyrus Beroukhim, cellist Brinton Smith, and pianist Sara Davis Buechner. Gerber’s most recent orchestral work, “Music in Dark Times,” was commissioned by Vladimir Ashkenazy. The four world premiere performances took place in March, 2009, with Maestro Ashkenazy conducting the San Francisco Symphony. 2013 saw the release on Albany Records of his piano music, played by the composer, and a duo for violin and piano, and in 2015 Albany will release a CD of his string quartets played by the Amernet Quartet.