NC State’s Department of English hosts a free-to-enter statewide poetry contest every year in which finalists are judged by a celebrity guest poet. This year’s guest judge is Yusef Komunyakaa, a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet whose body of work touches on a variety of subjects across history from civil rights, to jazz, to Vietnam.
To first be seen by a poet of this caliber, however, entries had to first make it to the finals amongst heavy competition.
“Anybody in the state of North Carolina that’s a resident, whether they were born here or not, can submit,” said Wilton Barnhardt, creative writing professor and the contest’s organizer. “We had 636 different poems from people who had real poetic talent. It was a brutal competition, but Mr. Komunyakaa got the good ones out.”
Twenty-one finalists were chosen from the entire pool, from which Komunyakaa chose a winner. Barnhardt said that, in addition to submissions from NC State students, the contest receives submissions from the Master of Fine Arts programs in Greensboro and Wilmington, creative writing programs from colleges such as Elon, Appalachian State and UNC-Chapel Hill, as well as extracurricular writing circles.
“We have all ages and all parts of the state represented,” Barnhardt said. “From down east to up in the mountains.”
Barnhardt said that published poets from different educational institutions are responsible for initial cuts, not NC State faculty, and that these secret judges review and pick finalists for the guest judge. The judges receive the entries without authors, instead receiving a numerical identifier, preventing the possibility of favoritism.
The contest has one overall winner, who receives a $500 reward, and four honorable mentions. Honorable mentions receive a poetry market, which is a kit with information about poetry publishers. The contest also awards the best undergraduate poem, judged by NC State faculty.
Barnhardt said that the contest also serves to discover poets who might be good fits for NC State’s Master of Fine Arts program.
“You know how basketball scouts go over to all the different high schools trying to find talent? This is our recruitment,” Barnhardt said. “We are finding out who is good in the state. If you look at the submissions, you’ll see Chapel Hill, you’ll see Wilmington, you’ll see Elon. Some of these are undergraduates and we want our hands on them.”
The winner of this year’s poetry contest was announced online yesterday, Samuel Piccone, a creative writing graduate student at NC State, for his poem, “Things I Wish I Told My Mother.” Piccone said the work of Komunyakaa is layered and accessible to all readers.
“It’s an incredible honor to have my work selected by him, and I feel just as honored to see him read,” Piccone said. “I saw him read as an undergrad at University of Northern Colorado in the mid-2000s and was hooked then and there. I still keep his collections close at hand when I’m writing because he displays a mastery of image, musicality and narrative in each of his poems.”
Komunyakaa’s work has spanned more than 40 years and his poetry can be found in more than a dozen collections. “Neon Vernacular,” the collection that awarded him his Pulitzer, speaks on Komunyakaa’s experiences in the Vietnam War and African American life.
“Experience may partly facilitate poetry,” Komunyakaa said. “But an engaging poem is also coupled with craft and a sense of aesthetics. The poem [is] revealed through the imagination … and often refined through work. I continue to define poetry as a distilled moment of confrontation aand celebration. Very few poems are merely gifts.”
Komunyakaa said that the poems he has read and judged have a unifying element — a “sense of place” that transcends borders.
“Through the years, I’ve searched for poetry that surprises me, for language that transports me and challenges my assumptions,” Komunyakaa said. “I must admit, I feel that a poem should possess imagery that is original and connected to place, and I can often sense if the writer has also been surprised.”
The contest opens every year in January and closes in early March. NC State runs a similar contest for fiction writing in the fall around October. For those interested in entering the contests, the only stipulations are that they must be a North Carolina resident, must not be a faculty member at a UNC university and not yet published.
Komunyakaa will formally announce the 2016 winners of the Poetry Contest and perform a reading of his poetry tonight at 7:30 p.m. in NC State’s Withers Hall auditorium. The event is open to anyone who wants to attend. In addition to reading from his poetry, Komunyakaa will take questions from the audience.
Poetry Contest Reception
Presentation of prizes
Reading from Komunyakaa
Withers Hall Auditorium
7:30 p.m.
