Winners of the Dunn writing contest.

Friday October 15, we announced the winners of the Dunn writing contest in an event at the Dahl Fine Arts Center.  This was a contest co-sponsored by the Dahl Fine Arts Center in Rapid City.  We had a small but enthusiastic audience. I was very happy that we could make the awards in the gallery with the Dunn exhibit.

Category: 16 and Over

 

                1st Prize ($50) to Eric Lochridge for work May Street

                              

                2nd Prize ($25) to Leah Nixon for work Portrait of my Grandmother

                                

                3rd Prize ($25) to Betty Downs for work Dakota Dreams

                               

  

                Honorable Mention to Gavin Woltjer for work Nameless Creek                               

                Honorable Mention to Patricia Anderson for The Human story in Art

                             

Category: Under 16

  

                1st Prize ($50) to Rose Wingert for May Street, 1922

                                

                 2nd Prize ($25) to Emily Wingert for Canvas

                   
 

                3rd Prize ($25) to Miranda Marker for A Walk in the Woods

Watch for the winning entries here soon.

Thank you to the Dahl for the opportunity to work with them on this project. Thank you to all who participated in the contest and to all who attended the awards ceremony.

                               

Fall Poets coffeehouse November 5, 2010

As always, please sign up to read at the event.  Call 394-4171 to pre-register or sign up when you get to the library.

We look forward to seeing you there.

Winners for the Dunn Writing Contest announced tomorrow

The winners for the Dunn Writing Contest, sponsored in partnership with The Dahl Arts Center, will be announced tomorrow in the Adelstein Gallery at the Dahl. Under 16 category winners will start at 4:30 and will be followed by the 16 and over category around 5:15. Hope to see you there.

Dunn Writing Contest

Media Advisory

For Immediate Release: 8/24/09

For more information:

Victoria Ledford

(605) 394-4101 x212 or x200

victoria@thedahl.org

-or-

Jason Walker

(605) 394-6139 x2243

JWalker@rcplib.org 

Who:  All Ages, FREE and open to the public

What:  Dunn Writing Contest

When:  Contest deadline Oct 8 @ 4pm

Where:  The Dahl Arts Center’s Senator Stan Adelstein + Lynda Clark Gallery at 713 Seventh Street (across from the library)

Why:  To highlight and encourage creative writing in our community and showcase the artwork of Harvey Dunn.

Dunn Writing Contest

Feeling creative?

We're looking for writing that is inspired by one of these elements:

•   Art in South Dakota

•   Animals in Art

•   Landscapes

•   The Human Story in Art

The Dahl Arts Center and High Plains Writers invite you to participate in a writing program inspired by the artwork of Harvey Dunn. 

A total of $200 is available for the most creative writers in two awards in each of two age groups.

Inspiration is FREE! Participants can enjoy free admission to the Dahl galleries to view the Harvey Dunn | Selected Works exhibit (just mention you are visiting as a contestant) or refer to images on the Dahl website at www.thedahl.org or visit highplainswriters.blogspot.com for complete contest info.

Young authors are encouraged to participate. All entries will be divided with special awards for youth participants. 

Contest Deadline Oct 8 @ 4pm

Contest Rules

1. Authors are limited to one entry per category.

2. All forms may enter - essay,  poetry, short story, etc - with limitations:

          a. Entries may not exceed 2 pages.

          b. Poems should not exceed 75 lines.

3. Authors are required to indicate whether they are 16 and Over or Under 16 on each entry.

4. All entries must include contact information on the right corner of the first page.

5. Submit entries by Oct 8 to: jwalker@rcplib.org

          or Rapid City Public Library

          attn: Jason Walker

          610 Quincy Street

          Rapid City, SD 57701

6.  Judging performed by High Plains Writers and Dahl Arts Center appointees and is not subject for review. Awards ceremony will be held at the Dahl Arts Center on Oct. 15 from 4:30 - 6:00pm

Dahl Arts Center | 713 7th Street | 605.394.4101| www.thedahl.org

The Dahl Arts Center is a municipal facility and receives support from the Rapid City Arts Council, City of Rapid City, Allied Arts Fund, and the South Dakota Arts Council through the Department of Tourism and State Development, and the National Endowment for the Arts.

*****************

Late Summer Contest

In cooperation with The Dahl Arts Center, we will soon be announcing a great new contest with monetary prizes, and there will be a youth division this time - something that we have not always been able to provide in our contests. Details should be finalized by the end of the week and advertizing will go out then.

Winners from 2010 Juried Poetry Awards

1st prize: Prairie Dark by Marcella Remund
2nd prize: Racing for the cure by Janice Mikesell
3rd prize: Eve’s beatitude by Eric Lochridge
Honorable Mention: Gertrude Johnson
Honorable Mention: Aisle twelve: a tale of grocery store romance by Jacob Herrmann

Video presentations will be coming shortly on HPW's youTube site.

So, yesterday I was reading the books section of Huffpost..

...and I saw this column about poetry.  It looked interesting and I started reading. Pretty soon, I knew I had to send it to the group for discussion. It was originally posted at The Poetry Foundation.

This Land Is Your Land

David Biespiel

Poetry Magazine

In the squares of the city--in the shadow of the steeple

Near the relief office--I see my people

And some are grumblin' and some are wonderin'

If this land's still made for you and me.

America's poets have a minimal presence in American civic discourse and a minuscule public role in the life of American democracy. I find this condition perplexing and troubling--both for poetry and for democracy. Because when I look at American poetry from the perspective of a fellow traveler, I see an art invested in various complex, fascinating, historical, and sometimes shop-worn literary debates. I see a twenty-first-century enterprise that's thriving in the off-the-beaten-track corners of the nation's cities and college towns. But at the same time that poetry's various coteries are consumed with art-affirming debates over poetics and styles, American poetry and America's poets remain amazingly inconsequential to the rest of the nation's civic, democratic, political, and public life.

This divide between poet and civic life is bad for American poetry and bad for America, too. Decade after decade, poetry slips into its fifteen-hundred-copy-print-run oblivion and scattered identities on the Internet, and we hear not one chirrup about it from the leading thinkers or writers who have access to a dialogue with the greater public. The culture-consuming audience that should provide poetry's best readers has scarcely noticed its diminishment. Or if they have noticed, they have also come to feel excluded, unconcerned, and dismissive because they believe that American poetry has become so esoteric that figuring out the differences among the warring poets and styles is wholly unnecessary for leading a culturally rich or civically engaged American life. (read the rest here or here.)

I found this a very interesting article and I hope that we can discuss it here.  I think this is a valid question although, in  my case, political poetry leads to bad poetry.  I have been so angry about politics and when I am angry, I write very bad poetry.  I keep trying to get past so much anger toward a simmering that might be productive and then some idiot congresscritter says something else that is so inhuman that I lose my mind again.

I do think that political poetry has been/is very important to any culture and ours, since we seem to have so little culture left, needs something to enlighten.

Not you at this hour

No one knows why
It isn't here and it isn't now.

Can we thank ourselves for that?

Somewhere tragedy is in progress, we don't have to have that.

Tomorrow is already stronger.


This disaster is mine, this hour is all me
but I want it just the same.