2007 Poetry Contest Now Open!

Perigee is excited to announce that our annual poetry contest is now open and ready to receive your submissions. As usual, we are feeling generous. We're giving away $650 in cash prizes to the top four entries--with a whopping $300 going to the first place entry! We'll be publishing the winning entries (along with the names of any honorable mentions) in our 2008 anniversary issue. Oh, and then there's that Pushcart Nomination we're giving the winning poem.

Need more reason to submit? How about our finalist judge Joseph Millar? He'll be following in the footsteps of Judy Jordan ('04), Steve Kowit ('05), and Marvin Bell ('06).

You can submit three poems for only $10, and there is no limit to how many submissions you can make (each 3 require $10). The deadline for this contest is December 31st, 2007. We will announce the results here on February 15, 2008.

When you're ready to review the guidelines, and submit your poems, click here. We wish all of this year's participants the best of luck!

Rumors Fly

The rumors are flying. Will the ever-popular Perigee Poetry Contest begin two days earlier this year? Maybe, just maybe.

We can't confirm or deny this rumor, but we can say that we are very excited about our upcoming poetry contest. Following in the footsteps of Judy Jordan ('04), Steve Kowit ('05), and Marvin Bell ('06), Joseph Millar has volunteered to be Perigee's 2007 Poetry Contest Finalist Judge!

Rumors aside, poetry is our most popular genre. And this just happens to be our most popular contest. Why open the floodgates two days earlier—on August 30th instead of September 1st? We have no idea.

But those are the rumors.

Check our site during the waning days of August, and get ready to submit your best poems, and win cash prizes and publication ... not to mention that coveted Pushcart nomination.

Kirkus Discoveries Reviews TSS

Kirkus Discoveries has reviewed Traveling Sitting Still, the first collection of stories from Perigee's founding editor. Here's what Kirkus Discoveries thinks of the book:

"People struggle with fraught predicaments—or their lurid perceptions of mundane situations—in this engaging collection.

A variety of characters and conundrums fill these fleeting tales. In "Kissing Margery Clean" a middle-aged man gives a ride home to the 16-year-old daughter of the woman he loves, and encounter that suddenly escalates from mere awkwardness to rape allegations. The dark "Rabbit" follows a stoned teen make-out session in an abandoned van that turn ugly . In "Chiquita Lady," a husband loses his wife to that notorious lothario, Jesus Christ. In "Noam Chomsky for President," a germ-phobic man stuck in Los Angeles traffic is enticed out of his bubble by a free-spirited redhead sporting the titular bumper sticker. The hero in "Aggravated" takes drastic action against a cricket that's driving him crazy with its chirping. The would-be writer of "Giving Up" deliberately abandons all human contact to concentrate on his craft but doesn't escape the Fed-Ex deliveryman. Two linked stories probe a war crime—POWs forced to dig their own graves—from mirror-image viewpoints: "Ausgraben" examines the last thoughts of a World War II GI captured by the Germans, while in "Hadji," pitiless American soldiers mete out a similar fate to a captured Iraqi insurgent. "Razing the Dead" surveys an apartment complex featuring a dotty gardener with dozens of cats, a seething Vietnam vet and a graduate student with a yen for crystal meth and kinky sex, while the rather similar title story eyes a bus full of passengers, including a seductive male prostitute, a sneering punk and a philosophical wino.

Character studies with narratives that have no particular place to go, but stocked with enough vibrant detail and insight that readers won't mind going along for the ride."

www.travelingsittingstill.com

2007 Poetry Contest Finalist Judge

We are happy to announce the guest finalist judge for Perigee's 2007 Poetry Contest, opening September 1st.

Joseph Millar has agreed to follow in the footsteps of Judy Jordan ('04), Steve Kowit ('05), and Marvin Bell ('07)—serving as the final voice in deciding the winners for our most popular comptetition.

Joseph Millar is the author of Fortune, from Eastern Washington University Press. His first collection, Overtime (2001), was finalist for the Oregon Book Award. Millar grew up in Pennsylvania, attended Johns Hopkins University and spent 25 years in the San Francisco Bay area, working at a variety of jobs, from telephone repairman to commercial fisherman. His poems have appeared in numerous magazines including TriQuarterly Review, Prairie Schooner, DoubleTake, Ploughshares, New Letters, Manoa, and River Styx. He has won fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts in Poetry, the Moncalvo Center for the Arts, and Oregon Literary Arts. He teaches at Oregon State University, The University of Oregon, and Pacific University’s MFA in Writing Program (see post below).

We are so pleased that Joe has agreed to serve as finalist judge, and we know he will bring a unique and talented perspective to our 2007 Poetry Contest.

Start writing those poems!


(Contest runs from September 1st through December 31st, 2007. Watch for our ad in Poets & Writers.)

Pacific University Named Top Five Low-Residency MFA

By Shelley Washburn

The Atlantic Monthly lists Pacific's MFA program as one of the nation's top programs.

In The Atlantic Monthly's current Special Fiction Issue 2007, Pacific's MFA program is listed as one of the nation's top programs along with four other venerable low-residency programs. Pacific's MFA is three years old and growing rapidly. The success of the program is a testament to the foresight of the University and to the talented and exceptional students and faculty who make up the heart and soul of the program.