Sylvia Plath at Smith *

 




Award: $500

Judge for 2008: Sharon Olds

The winner & three finalists will read their poems at the Judge’s reading

Smith College, April 8, 2008

Submissions accepted: October 1 - December 1, 2007

One poem per student, maximum of 25 lines.

No entry fee. Application form required.

Winners will be announced March 1, 2008


 

Entry Form

 

 

In addition to the cash prize awarded to the winner, she and the three finalists will receive a signed copy of Strike Sparks, by Sharon Olds. The winner and finalists will also spend the day at Smith College, meeting privately with Ms. Olds to discuss their poetry, and presenting their winning work at her evening reading.

 


The Poetry Center at Smith College was founded in 1998 with the goals of bringing distinguished poets to the College, creating a video archive of their readings, promoting an appreciation of poetry in the larger community through outreach to schools. The Poetry Center celebrates Smith’s long and illustrious relationship with such world-renowned poets as Sylvia Plath, W.H. Auden, Richard Wilbur, and Adrienne Rich.

Sharon Olds

 



Author of eight volumes of poetry, Sharon Olds has been much praised for the courage, emotional power, and extraordinary physicality of her work. She is the recipient of many distinguished honors, including a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, Lamont Poetry Selection, and the National Book Critics’ Circle Award. A Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, Olds teaches graduate poetry workshops at N.Y.U. as well as the writing workshop she helped found at a 900-bed state hospital for the severely disabled.



 

 

 

 

View the 2007 winners


From Sylvia Plath's journal, Smith College, April 27, 1953