Dear KC: A Locally Inspired Poetry Contest
Do you love Loose Park in the summertime, Town Topic late at night, riding the KC Streetcar, and our city's amazing system of libraries? Write a poem about it!
The Young Friends of the Kansas City Public Library and KC Streetcar present "Dear KC: A Locally Inspired Poetry Contest," in celebration of National Poetry Month. Submissions will be open from March 15 to April 5.
Contest Details:- Contest is open to writers 18 and older.
- Poets can submit more than one entry. Limit one poem per entry.
- Poems can be in any shape, form or style, but should stick to the locally inspired theme of "Dear KC."
- Poems should not have been previously published elsewhere, nor should they be scheduled for future publication elsewhere.
- Three winners will be selected by local poets and contest judges, Andrew Johnson and Piper Abernathy
- Winning poems will be turned into illustrated posters (called "broadsides") by Crux KC designers, and displayed along the KC Streetcar line.
- Winners will also be featured in a public reading this spring.
- Entries can be submitted via this form between March 15 - April 5, 2023.
Piper Abernathy is an enthusiast of puns, curator of eye-memories she can’t capture while driving, and lover of KCMO. She also teaches English at Pembroke Hill High School and is a proud poetry MFA from UMKC and Literacy Specialist Ed. from Rockhurst University. This contest combines so many things she loves: people, poems, places (so, nouns). But also literacy in MOTION!
Andrew Michael Johnson is an author, poet, and essayist living in Kansas City, Missouri. His work has appeared in The Sun, Image,Commonweal, Crazyhorse, and elsewhere. He is the author of two books: The Thread and On Earth As It Is. He is the recipient of a Charlotte Street Foundation residency, an Arts KC Inspiration grant, a Rocket Grant, a Vermont Studio Center residency, and a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship.