Prairie Poetry Pound Down at Bird Island

Every year Bird Island has its annual Island Days celebration. This year they are sponsoring a new opportunity for the town and surrounding areas to get involved with. The Bird Island Cultural Centre is excited to announce the first ever Prairie Poetry Pound Down!

The Prairie Poetry Pound Down will be a live reading during Island Days on June 17, 2017. 4-7 pm.

Online poetry competition:

The link to submit your poetry:
https://birdislandculturalcentre.submittable.com/submit

Message from Bird Island Cultural Centre: This event is online via the Submittable website, lasting through June 3, 2017. We are also having a live event during our Island Days celebration in which poets will read aloud their work and the audience will have a chance to respond and vote on their favorite poem/poet. You can enter your poems in either the online event or the live event or both events, but please make sure to let us know on your submission form which event(s) you are entering for. You will also be able to purchase a spot in the poetry workshop taking place the morning of June 17th under instruction from our judge and spectacular poet, Athena Kildegaard. This workshop will consist of practicing “a variety of ways to think about what’s working in your poem and how to revise toward a finished poem. Bring 1-3 drafts of poems you want to work on, paper, and pen or pencil. If you don’t have a poem to revise, come anyway! We’ll start with an activity that you can use to create a first draft.”

Our Judge: Athena Kildegaard
Athena Kildegaard is the author of four books of poetry: Rare Momentum, Bodies of Light (a Minnesota Book Award finalist), Cloves & Honey (a Midwest Book Award finalist), and Ventriloquy. Her poems have appeared in many journals, several anthologies and a textbook; they’ve been set to music; and they’ve been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. Kildegaard received the LRAC/McKnight Artist Fellowship and grants from LRAC and from the Minnesota State Arts Board. She grew up in St. Peter, MN, and has lived in Chicago, Austin TX, Oxford MS, New Orleans, Guanajuato Mexico, Denmark, and Sydney Australia. Now she lives and teaches in Morris, Minnesota.

Athena will be doing a reading and book signing at the Bird Island Cultural Centre on the evening of June 16th. She will also be conducting a workshop the morning of June 17th before we commence the live segment of our Prairie Poetry Pound Down. For more information on that, please contact us or check our website and/or Facebook events page.

Submission/Workshop Due Dates
-Online submissions: June 3, 2017
-Live submissions: June 16, 2017 (submitted online and/or bring with you June 17th)
-Sign up for the workshop with Athena by June 10, 2017

Prizes:
For the online & in-person competitions: top places will win a divided pot of half the total we collect in registration fees for each event. Local winners will also have the option to forgoe cash over cost for a painting class, yoga class, any number of possibilities for the programs we are starting soon.