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PRIZE POEMS ANTHOLOGIES
Each year the NFSPS publishes an anthology containing the prize-winning
poems of the fifty contests held in the spring (Deadline: March 15).
This book is presented to each person who attends the national
convention in the year of its publication, but the books are also
available to other members of NFSPS and to the general public. There are
also some copies of the books published in previous years available. To
order prize poems anthologies, make a check payable to NFSPS and send it
to Valerie Bailey, 2207 Parhaven Drive, San Antonio, TX 78232. Add to
the price of the book/s mailing costs of $2.75 for one book and add $.75
for each additional book. Here are the books that are available:
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ENCORE: PRIZE POEMS OF THE NFSPS 2008
Edited by Valerie Martin Bailey. San Antonio, TX:
NFSPS, 2008. The biggest prize winner in the book is "You Sing Your Brothers" by Helen Keith Beaman of (Provo, Utah). This
anthology is available for $15.00 plus postage.
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ENCORE: PRIZE POEMS OF THE NFSPS 2007
Edited by Valerie Martin Bailey. San Antonio, TX:
NFSPS, 2007. Biggest prizewinner in the book was
"Classics Scholar in a Hospital" by Daniel Fernandez (Brooklyn, NY). This
anthology is available for $10.00 plus postage.
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ENCORE: PRIZE POEMS OF THE NFSPS 2006
Edited by Valerie Martin Bailey. San Antonio, TX:
NFSPS, 2006. Biggest prizewinner in the book was
"The Road Not Finished" by Glenna H. Holloway (Naperville, IL). This
anthology is available for $10.00 plus postage. |
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| ENCORE: PRIZE POEMS OF THE NFSPS 2005
Edited by Valerie Martin Bailey. San Antonio, TX: NFSPS, 2005.
Biggest prizewinner in the book was "The Meandering Love Poem" by Sue
Ranglack (Murray, UT). This anthology is available for $10.00 plus
postage.
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| ENCORE: PRIZE POEMS OF THE NFSPS 2004
Edited by Valerie Martin Bailey. San Antonio, TX: NFSPS, 2004.
Biggest prizewinner in the book was "Sunday in the House He Left" by
Anne McCrady (Henderson, TX). This anthology is available for $8.00
plus postage. |
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| ENCORE: PRIZE POEMS OF THE NFSPS 2003
Edited by Budd Powell Mahan, Dallas, TX: Great Impressions, 2003.
Biggest prizewinner in the book was "Reflection: For Li Po and Tu Fu"
by Ruth F. Harrison (Waldport, OR). This anthology is available for
$8.00 plus postage.
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| ENCORE: PRIZE POEMS OF THE NFSPS 2002
Edited by Budd Powell Mahan. Dallas, TX: Great Impressions, 2002.
Biggest prizewinner in the book was "Trimming Poison Ivy" by Pat
Underwood (Colfax, IA). This anthology is available for $6.00 plus
postage
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| ENCORE: PRIZE POEMS OF THE NFSPS 2001
Edited by Budd Powell Mahan. Dallas, TX: Great Impressions, 2001.
Biggest prizewinner in the book was "Six Riffs on the Rain" by Jeanne
Wagner (Kensington, CA). This anthology is available for $6.00 plus
postage
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ENCORE: PRIZE POEMS OF THE NFSPS 2000
Edited by Budd Powell Mahan. Dallas, TX: Great Impressions, 2000.
Biggest prizewinner in the book was "Sharky" by Carlee Swan (Lebanon,
SD). This anthology is available for $4.00 plus postage |
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ENCORE: PRIZE POEMS OF THE NFSPS 1999
Edited by Budd Powell Mahan. Dallas, TX: Great Impressions, 1999.
Biggest prizewinner in the book was "Superior in All Seasons" by
Barbara Brent Brower (Okemos, MI). This anthology is available for $2.00
plus postage. |
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STEVENS MANUSCRIPT
COMPETITION WINNERS
Each year NFSPS sponsors a manuscript competition for collections of
poetry. The deadline is October 15. For additional details see
Manuscript Contest. These prize-winning collections from the
past may be ordered from
Polly Opsahl
270 Brewster Road
Rochester Hills, MI 48309-1507
for the prices listed. Add to the price of the book/s mailing costs
of $1.50 for one or two books and add $.50 for each 2 additional books.
Make checks payable to NFSPS. Here are the books that are available:
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Bear Country by Dana Soonnenschein
(Rochester Hills, MI: NFSPS Press, 2009). $15
plus $1.50 postage if ordered from Polly Opsahl at the address above.
Questions may be directed to
Pollyannop@comcast.net
The poems in this book work together as a sequence, exploring the
difficult relations of humans and wild nature through a focus on bears
of all kinds. As 2008 Stevens competition judge Carolyne Wright notes
in her foreword, they do so in a great variety of poetic forms, including
"narrative free verse, slant-rhyming couplets, prose poems, a pantoum,
and even a bear-shaped concrete poem."
As Wright also notes, "This is poetry freed from a
dependence upon autobiography," focused outward on its subject. That
subject, Wright elucidates, "is Ursa, and the literal and figurative
territory in which it dwells, a numinous and compelling force in human
mythology, and a genus whose every species is endangered because of
human encroachment and predation throughout its range." "One must bear
up in Bear Country," writes Iowa Review editor David Hamilton,
"bear with, bear down as in giving birth, and bear witness, first to our
shameful rule over the wild but also to our longing for that wild."
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Capturing the Dead by Daniel Nathan
Terry
(Rochester Hills, MI: NFSPS Press, 2008). $15
plus $1.50 postage if ordered from Polly Opsahl at the address above.
Questions may be directed to
Pollyannop@comcast.net
This book is a sequence of dramatic lyrics in the imagined voices of
Civil War soldiers and photographers, primarily that of a fictional war
photographer named Noah Williams. "Although its subject matter is
familiar," comments Jeff Gundy, "the treatment is always fresh and
sometimes dazzling. . . . Common soldiers and famous figures--from
Matthew Brady to John Wilkes Booth to Lincoln himself--take on weight
and solidity, captured in words that emulate the precision of film."
Gundy places Capturing the Dead among "other great sets of war
poems from the last two centuries," from Whitman's Drum-Taps to
Andrew Hudgins' After the Lost War. Terry's poems, Gundy sums up,
"offer both fidelity to history and relevance to our own predicament.
They have much to teach us."
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The Meager Life and Modest Times of Pop
Thorndale by W. T. Pfefferle
(Rochester Hills, MI: NFSPS Press, 2007). $15
plus $1.50 postage if ordered from Polly Opsahl at the address above.
Questions may be directed to
Pollyannop@comcast.net
Patricia Fargnoli describes this book as "a novel in poetry" and its
title character, Pop Thorndale, as "our contemporary American
Everyman--ironic, mid-life, overweight, suburban, trying, as he ages, to
find some meaning in what he knows has been an unremarkable and unheroic
life." The book is made up of poems written in his voice, as his
"memoir." It is, says Fargnoli, "a book that finally suggests that every
life, no matter how imperfectly lived, has value."
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Harvest by Budd Powell Mahan
(Rochester Hills, MI: NFSPS Press, 2006) This book, which costs $15
in bookstores, costs only $12.00 plus $1.50 postage if ordered from
Polly Opsahl at the address above. Questions may be directed to
Pollyannop@comcast.net.
Lawson Fusao Inada said of this book, "Harvest is a compelling
volume of authentic verse. Each poem is rooted in the land. . . . The
harvest is a blessing and a revelation."
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Aqua Curves by Karen Braucher
(Rochester Hills, MI: NFSPS Press, 2005), This book, which costs $15 in
bookstores, costs only $10.00 plus $1.50 postage if ordered from Polly
Opsahl at the address above. Questions may be directed to
Pollyannop@comcast.net.
Peter Meinke calls this book "more than a collection of poems. This
is a complete book with a mature vision expressed with passion, wit, and
lyrical intensity." He adds that the poems in the book are "clear-eyed
and generous."
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THE ZEN PIANO-MOVER by Jeanne Wagner
(Rochester Hills, MI: NFSPS Press, 2004), $5.00 plus postage
In her poetry Jeanne Wagner explores universal questions about spaces
and connections in human relationships. She reminds her readers of
demands made upon us despite "how frail the body's wiring is." Mary
Jo Firth Gillett calls this book "a collection to savor."
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A THOUSAND BONDS:Marie Curie and the
Discovery of Radium by Eleanor Swanson
(Rochester Hills, MI: NFSPS Press, 2003), $5.00 plus postage
Although Eleanor Swanson's book centers on the life and work of
Madame Curie, the relevance of this cycle of poems to issues of our time
is clear. Ellen Bass finds Swanson's graceful poems urgently applicable
to us because of Curie's "fierce devotion to science" regardless of "unforseeable
consequences." Roald Hoffman calls this collection "touching," capable
of moving readers to feel for and with Curie, who comes alive in these
poems.
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THE FINE ART OF POSTPONEMENT by Jane
Bailey
(Rochester Hills, MI: NFSPS Press, 2002), $5.00 plus postage
Poems by Jane Bailey, a registered nurse, have been accepted for
publication in many journals. She has also won several awards, including
the Richard Hugo Prize, the C. Hamilton Bailey Fellowship, and the
Stevens Manuscript Competition for 2001. She lives in Salem, Oregon.
Christopher Howell calls Bailey's The Fine Art of Postponement "a
wonderful debut volume" marked by "a freshness of voice and a
penetrating honesty." He adds that "our daily routines, affection,
sexuality, loss, memory, and absurdity are observed and rendered . . .
with a skill that lets us feel it is our own."
For a review of this book, see
Strophes Online, January 2004 issue.
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THE STONES FOR A PILLOW by Diane Glancy
(Rochester Hills, MI: NFSPS Press, 2001), $3.00 plus postageThis
"moving and remarkable book," as Peter Meinke calls it, won the Stevens
Manuscript Competition for 2001. Michael Dennis Brown wrote of it,
"Freshness and subtlety are everywhere." Glancy, a professor at
Macalester College, has published several novels and collections of
essays as well as poetry. She has also received many awards, including a
National Endowment for the Arts fellowship. These poems add
substantively to her already impressive body of work.
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BINOCULARS by Douglas Lawder
(Rochester Hills, MI: NFSPS Press, 2000), $3.00 plus postage
Winner of the Stevens Manuscript Competition for 2000, this collection
by Douglas Lawder matches the promise of his early work, of which
Richard Eberhart wrote, "Lawder's poems invite repeated readings. He
has a new combination of the sensuous and the surreal," and James
Wright cited the "dark and strange precision" of Lawder's poetry.
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| SINGING IN THE KEY OF L by Barbara Nightingale
(Rochester Hills, MI: NFSPS Press, 1999), $3.00 plus postage
Of this book which won the Stevens Manuscript Competition for 1999, Lola
Haskins wrote, "In this stunning collection, Nightingale succeeds in
doing what poets are supposed to do. She assimilates the data of the
physical world and transmits it into higher realms of awareness. . . .
We recognize her truth, and it illuminates our own experience."
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WEIGHED IN THE BALANCES by Alan Birkelbach
(Austin, TX: Plainview Press), $3.00 plus postage
Margo LaGattuta said of this poet, winner of the Stevens Manuscript
Competition for 1998: "A unique and original voice, Birkelbach invites
us into his world of surprises. He balances the unexpected with the
everyday, questioning with revelation. His wit and wisdom shine through
these poems."
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SHADOWLESS FLIGHT by Todd Palmer
(Deerfield, IL: Lake Shore Publishing,1997), $3.00 plus postage
Todd Palmer, whose poems won the Stevens Manuscript Competition for
1997, was called by Anne Marx "a contemporary voice dealing with ageless
themes," and Marx went on to say, "His virtue, in contrast to authors of
similar settings, is clearness rather than obscurity, a steady
illumination rather than fireworks. He knows what is real and his poetry
is nourished by such knowledge."
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I HAVE LEARNED FIVE THINGS by Elaine Christensen
(Deerfield, IL: Lake Shore Publishing, 1996), $3.00 plus postage
Of Elaine Christensen, poet whose work won the Stevens Manuscript
Competition for 1996, Michael Dennis Browne wrote, "This poet speaks to
us, with natural fluency and sureness of tone, from the center of a
vigorously lived life full humanity, her frailties and strengths
inextricably combined. It's a joy to discover these stirring poems."
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A COMMON LANGUAGE by Kathryn Clement
(Deerfield, IL: Lake Shore Publishing, 1995), $3.00 plus postage
David Baker says of Kathryn Clement's A Common Language, "The
craft of these poems--their tight lines and right stanzas--seems
unforced and natural . . . . Kathryn has woven for us a delicate but
durable cloth for the cold days ahead." |

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| COLLEGE/UNIVERSITY-LEVEL
POETRY COMPETITION WINNERS
The books which won the competition in 1999, 2000, 2001, and 2002 may
be ordered for $3.00 per book plus $.70 postage and handling. The books
which won the competition for earlier years may be ordered for a
donation of at least $1.00 per book to cover postage and handling. Make
your check or money order to NFSPS and order from
N. Colwell Snell
P. O. Box 520698
Salt Lake City, UT 84152-0698 |
| The Edna Meudt Memorial Award 2008 FLOODPLAIN
by Heather Hadley
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The Florence Kahn Memorial Award 2008
THE YEAR OF BLACK COFFEE
by Caitlin McLaughlin
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| The Edna Meudt Memorial Award 2007 ON THE
HINGE
by Jory M. Mickelson
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The Florence Kahn Memorial Award 2007
ON THE WAY TO FISH FOR SHINER
by Kory Fluckiger
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The Edna Meudt Memorial Award 2006
BOTTLED WATER
by Josef Nguyen
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The Florence Kahn Memorial Award 2006
FIGHTING NATURE
by Hannah New |
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| The Edna Meudt Memorial Award 2005
SEDIMENTS
by Mirra Evans |
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| The Florence Kahn Memorial Award 2005
NIGHT IS A GOOD CHILD
by David Krump |
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| The Edna Meudt Memorial Award 2004
RUNNING IN PLACE
by Sue Ranglack
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| The Florence Kahn Memorial Award 2004
SONGS FROM THE SPRINGHOUSE
by Rebecca Rossiter
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| The Edna Meudt Memorial Award 2003
LIFE SCIENCE
by Marianne Klekacz
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| The Florence Kahn Memorial Award 2003
INTERVALS IN LIFE
by Christina M. Flaugher
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| The Edna Meudt Memorial Award 2002
ETERNAL SOUL
by Amenda J. Brown
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| The Florence Kahn Memorial Award 2002
SALIDA LA MARIPOSA
by Michelle J. Martinez
(Currently out of print) |
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| The Edna Meudt Memorial Award 2001
SHE OF ME
by Lesa Allison
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| The Florence Kahn Memorial Award 2001
CROSSING
by Garth Greenwell |
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| The Edna Meudt Memorial Award 2000
AND IT WILL BE EDEN
by Joan Malerba-Foran |
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| The Florence Kahn Memorial Award 2000
FROM THE PROVINCE OF GRATITUDE
by Ilya Kaminsky |
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| The Edna Meudt Memorial Award 1999
WHITE CLIFFS
by Cynthia J. Webecke |
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| The Edna Meudt Memorial Award 1999
SO BRIEF A FIELD
by Caroline J. Pittman |
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| The Edna Meudt Memorial Award 1998
SELAH
by Joseph A. Fitzpatrick |
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| The Edna Meudt Memorial Award 1998
MORNING BREAD
by Deborah Mallett Spanich |
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| The Edna Meudt Memorial Award 1997
THE LITANY OF FAREWELLS
by Amy Motlagh |
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| The Edna Meudt Memorial Award 1997
LEAPING FROM THE BOTTOM STEP
by Jodi Mancastraoppa |
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| The Edna Meudt Memorial Award 1996
PEOPLE THESE ARE ROOTS
by Christopher Arigo |
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| The Edna Meudt Memorial Award 1996
BEARING WITNESS
by Mary E. Bryant |
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