Arizona State Poetry Society’s 2024 Annual Contest is accepting entries NOW through August 31, 2024. Once again, Brick Cave is the sponsor of the Sci-Fi/Fantasy category. We chatted with former ASPS President Christy White (currently Outreach and Annual Contest Chair) about the awards and poetry.
The contest allows submitters the chance to win a part of $100 in prizes for the category, and $2,300 available across al the categories. For more information on all 22 categories and how to submit:
https://azpoetry.net/contests/#AnnualContest
Information includes all fee, format and length requirements for the contest. Arizona State Poetry Society judges and notifies all winners of their status.
About Christy White
Christy has served the ASPS Board in some capacity most of the years since 1996 when she first joined ASPS. She has served on other nonprofit boards as well and was one of the stakeholders and first committee members that established Arizona’s first poet laureate. Christy has been writing poetry since she was a child and published her first poem in Kentucky at age 12. She has published seven chapbooks and her poetry has been published in a number of regional journals including The Blue Guitar Magazine, Erete’s Bloom, Veil and Four Chambers. Christy’s passion is to help connect the various communities of poets of Arizona, and to that end, five years ago established a monthly email newsletter about poetry events and open mics that is circulated throughout Arizona.
Q: Talk about the history of the ASPS Poetry awards. How have they grown over time.
The ASPS annual contest has been ongoing since well before I became a member in 1996. Unfortunately, I can't give you an exact year it started, but I can tell you that in more recent years our categories have grown from about 12 to 21 or 22 categories thanks to our many sponsors. The winners are featured in our annual anthology, Sandcutters, which has been in continuous publication for more than 35 years. Sandcutters used to be a quarterly publication, but now is published annually and, as of 2023, can be ordered on Amazon. Not only the annual contest winners, 1st, 2nd and 3rd Place, published but our member quarterly contest winners and one poem for any member that has not won in our contests. As of 2023, we also publish the Spring Youth Contest winners.
Q: How important are the awards in encouraging more poetry?
Winning a contest, even placing as an honorable mention, encourages members and non-members to continue writing poetry. We always hope that poets who do not win are motivated to continue to write poetry no matter what judge says. There are many fine poems submitted each year and you just can't tell what a judge will find to be a winning poem. As contest chair I continue to be impressed with the high quality of poems we receive.
Q: How important are the sponsors in making the awards successful?
If it weren't for our sponsors, we would have only one category, the ASPS Award. Poets write about everything in their experiences, so we have made it a priority to encourage our sponsors to choose category topics that reflect a variety of subjects and many types of poem forms. ASPS strives to encourage all forms of poetry that shows almost any topic a poet may find interesting and inspiring. Our sponsors are our partners in inspiring and encouraging the study and writing of poetry.
