THE COMSTOCK REVIEW ANNUAL POETRY CONTEST
The Muriel Craft Bailey Memorial Award ANNUAL POETRY CONTEST 2008
Final Judge: Marie Howe Initial Screening by Editors
First Prize - $1 ,000 2nd Prize -$250; 3rd Prize - $100; Honorable Mentions - Subscriptions
DEADLINE: Postmark by July 1, 2008
Official Rules: 1. Each poem must be typed on a sheet of white 8-1/2 by 11 paper.
2. Poems must be original, unpublished in any medium (print or electronic), and not under consideration elsewhere.
3. No simultaneous submissions, please.
4. Poems must not exceed 40 lines in length.
5. Poet's name, address, and telephone number must be on the reverse side of each poem, so it is not visible to the judges.*(in other words, no identifying information on the front of the poem)
6. Include #10 SASE for contest results or check the website after October 1st. No entries will be returned.
7. All prizewinners and Special Merit poems will appear in the Fall/Winter Issue of The Comstock Review. (See guidelines for details.)
8. An entry fee of $4.00 must accompany each poem. (No entry fees returned. *)
9. No limit to number of poems at $4.00 EACH. (For example: $12 for 3 poems. Make check out to "The Comstock Review.")
(Special offer: Contest entrants are welcome to order a one year subscription (2 issues) at the discounted price of $15, including postage and handling inside USA. Canada and Mexico include $3.00 extra for postage. Other countries $6.00 extra. Please include this with your entry fee.)
Send contest submissions, after April 1, 2008 to: CWG Poetry Contest 2007 4956 St. John Dr. Syracuse, NY 13215
Also click here for Contest Guidelines which offer many further explanations of the rules and editor preferences.
*Red section above highlighted since we often receive poems that fall outside the rules and they will be disqualified unless we can reach the poets and have them resubmitted following the rules. The Editors
Judge for 2007: Marie Howe

Marie Howe has a long-awaited new book out in 2008: The Kingdom of Ordinary Times. Stanley Kunitz describes her poetry as " luminous, intense, and eloquent, rooted in an abundant inner life.” Her previous books include The Good Thief (which was chosen for the 1987 National Poetry Series) and What the Living Do (1998). She has also co-edited In the Company of My Solitude: American Writing from the AIDS Pandemic. Her poems have appeared in The Atlantic, The New Yorker, Agni, Harvard Review and New England Review, among many others. Marie Howe received a Guggenheim and a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship. She teaches at The Michener Center for Writers at The University of Texas in Austin, at Sarah Lawrence and NYU.
PREVIOUS JUDGES:
2007: Carolyn Forche

Carolyn Forché was born in Detroit, Michigan, in 1950. She studied at Michigan State University and earned an MFA from Bowling Green State University. Forché is the author of four books of poetry: Blue Hour (HarperCollins, 2004); The Angel of History (1994), which received the Los Angeles Times Book Award; The Country Between Us (1982), which received the Poetry Society of America's Alice Fay di Castagnola Award, and was the Lamont Poetry Selection of The Academy of American Poets; and Gathering the Tribes (1976), which was selected for the Yale Series of Younger Poets by Stanley Kunitz. She is also the editor of Against Forgetting: Twentieth-Century Poetry of Witness (1993). Among her translations are Mahmoud Darwish's Unfortunately, It Was Paradise: Selected Poems with Munir Akash (2003), Claribel Alegria's Flowers from the Volcano (1983), and Robert Desnos's Selected Poetry (with William Kulik, 1991). Her honors include fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Lannan Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts. In 1992, she received the Charity Randall Citation from the International Poetry Forum. Carolyn Forché teaches in the MFA Program at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia. (Information from the Academy of American Poets.) For Further information: Modern American Poetry A recent poem from the New Yorker is available by clicking on the title of the magazine.
2006, THOMAS LUX
(Courtesy of the Academy of American Poets.) For further information and sample poems visit: http://www.poemhunter.com/thomas-lux/poet-8306/
Thomas Lux was born in Northampton, Massachusetts, in 1946. He was educated at Emerson College and The University of Iowa. His books of poetry include The Cradle Place (Houghton Mifflin, 2004); The Street of Clocks (2001); New and Selected Poems, 1975-1995 (1997), which was a finalist for the 1998 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize; The Blind Swimmer: Selected Early Poems, 1970-1975 (1996); Split Horizon (1994), for which he received the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award; Pecked to Death by Swans (1993); A Boat in the Forest (1992); The Drowned River: New Poems (1990); Half Promised Land (1986); Tarantulas on the Lifebuoy (1983); Massachusetts (1981); Like a Wide Anvil from the Moon the Light (1980); Sunday (1979); Madrigal on the Way Home (1977); The Glassblower's Breath (1976); Memory's Handgrenade (1972); and The Land Sighted (1970). Thomas Lux also has edited The Sanity of Earth and Grass (1994, with Jane Cooper and Sylvia Winner) and has translated Versions of Campana (1977).
Lux has been the poet in residence at Emerson College (1972-1975), and a member of the Writing Faculty at Sarah Lawrence College and the Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers. He has also taught at the Universities of Iowa, Michigan, and California at Irvine, among others. He has been a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Award in Poetry and has received three National Endowment for the Arts grants and a Guggenheim Fellowship.
2005, CORNELIUS EADY

Cornelius Eady is the author of six collections of poetry, most recently "Brutal Imagination" (Putnam, 2001), which was a finalist for the National Book Award. His other collections include "Victims of the Latest Dance Craze," "The Gathering of My Name," and "You Don't Miss Your Water." Eady's many awards and honors include fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Guggenheim Foundation, and the Lila Wallace-Readers' Digest Foundation. With Toi Derricote, he is co-founder of Cave Canem, a summer workshop/retreat for African American writers. In December 2002, a production of "Brutal Imagination" opened at the Vineyard Theater, and was awarded the 2002 Oppy Award from Newsday for the best first play by an American playwright. Eady is currently co-chair of the MFA Creative Writing Program at American University.
For further information and sample poems including audio, visit: http://www.blackbird.vcu.edu/v2n1/poetry/eady_c/ http://www.pshares.org/Authors/authorDetails.cfm?prmAuthorID=432 http://www.chelseaforum.com/speakers/Eady.htm
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