2009 Poetry Contest Now Open!

Perigee's 2009 Poetry Contest opens today! Steve Kowit and finalist judge Suzanne Lummis are seeking your most finely crafted, memorable poems. Here are the important details you'll want to know:

Deadline: August 31st, 2009.
Prizes: $600 in cash ($300/$200/$100 for top three poems).
Reading fee: Times are tough and budgets are tight, so we've reduced our reading fee by 50%, to only $5, but we haven't reduced the prize money one cent.
Results: Winners and honorable mentions (if any) will be announced on October 1st, and published in our October 15th, 2009 issue.

This year's finalist judge is Suzanne Lummis, founder and director of the Los Angeles Poetry Festival, and editor of Speechless the Magazine. Her poems appear in the anthologies California Poetry from the Gold Rush to the Present (Heyday Books), Poems of the American West (Knopf), Poetry Daily (Sourcebooks), Place as Purpose: Poetry of the Western States (Autry/Sun & Moon), Stand Up Poetry and in major literary publications in the US and UK. She has recent or forthcoming poems in Poetry International, The Antioch Review, The Hudson Review, Ploughshares, and Pool. Her last collection, In Danger, was part of The California Poetry Series (Heyday Books/Roundhouse Press). She teaches several levels of poetry through the UCLA Extension Writers' Program including a course she developed "Poetry and the Movies: The Poem Noir." In 2006 she taught "L.A. Stories," fiction and film, at Emerson College in Burbank.

This is our most popular contest, so don't wait long to submit. You'll want to get your poems in right away to get ahead of the pack. We invite you to read complete guidelines and submit your work through our re-designed web site.