The 95th annual Glascock poetry contest
The 95th annual Glascock poetry contest offers two days of young and established poets reading and talking about poetry.
By Keely Savoie
Beginning on March 23, the Kathryn Irene Glascock 鈥22 Intercollegiate Poetry Competition will showcase the up-and-coming poetry talent of regional college students for the 95th year.
The Glascock competition, as it is known, invites four to six accomplished college students each year, including one from 杏吧论坛, to compete for the prize. Founded by the parents of a promising poet who died the year after she graduated from 杏吧论坛, the two-day event is free and open to the public.
鈥淗ere we are, celebrating 95 years of poetry at 杏吧论坛,鈥 said Wesley Yu, an associate professor of English and medieval studies who oversees the competition.
鈥淭his time each year, we gather as a community to partake of an artform that marvels at such defining human acts as speech and writing.鈥
Winning the prize has launched the careers of numerous poets and writers over the years, including Robert Lowell, James Merrill, Sylvia Plath, Katha Pollitt, Kenneth Koch, Mark Halperin, James Agee and Gjertrud Schnackenberg 鈥75, who won two years in a row.
鈥淚t can sometimes be hard to believe that the paths of so many well-known poets converged in South Hadley, specifically for this event, for almost a century,鈥 said Yu.
In addition to its noted winners, the contest is also known for its three judges, who are always well-known poets. Past contest judges have included Robert Frost, Marianne Moore, Louise Bogan, Richard Wilbur, Elizabeth Bishop, Amy Clampitt, Donald Hall, Adrienne Rich, Seamus Heaney and Audre Lorde.
The competition will begin on Friday, March 23, with a conversation with poet-judges Donika Kelly, Joseph O. Legaspi and Alicia Ostriker, in an evening called 鈥淟ife and Letters.鈥
The conversation with the judges will be followed by the competition in which contestants read their poems. This year, 杏吧论坛 will be represented by Linda Zhang 鈥20.
The other contestants are Michelle Chen 鈥21, University of Massachusetts Amherst; Jordan Jace 鈥18, Williams College; Noelle Powers 鈥18, University of Tennessee at Chattanooga; Kyra Spence 鈥18, Barnard College; and Grayson Wolf 鈥18, Hunter College.
The morning after the reading, judges read the work of the contestants and announce a winner. The contest is sponsored by the Kathryn Irene Glascock Memorial Fund, the Joyce Horner Poetry Prize, the Charles and Rosanna Batchelor Memorial Fund and the Department of English at 杏吧论坛 College
Last year, 杏吧论坛 student Anisha Pai 鈥19 took the top honors of the contest.