2009 WPA Poetry Contest Submission Guidelines

The Washington Poets Association announces its 2009 Annual Poetry Contests. There are four contests this year:

General Rules and Eligibility

The submission period for all 2009 contests is January 31, 2009 - June 30, 2009.

Submissions must be made online only. Postal submissions will no longer be accepted.

The submission form will be available from the first minute of the opening date until the last minute of the closing date, U.S. Pacific Time Zone.

Contests are open to all poets (except current WPA board members).

Previously published poems, poems that have won awards, and poems awarded money from any previous WPA contest are NOT eligible.

There is a 50-line maximum limit to any poem you submit.

You may submit up to 10 poems per contest.

You may enter as many of the contests as you like. Each contest entry (and payment) must be made separately.

Contest Entry Fees

The base entry fee for any contest is $5.00. This covers the first poem entered into that contest. Additional poems submitted to the same contest require an additional fee of $1.00 per poem. If you enter more than one contest, the entry fees for each contest must be paid separately.

Entry fees must be paid at the time of submission using the WPA online payment system (details below). Poems received without confirmed payment will not be considered.

Preparation of the Poems

1. Create a single Microsoft Word (.doc) or Portable Document Format (.pdf) file that contains all of the poems that you want to enter for a particular contest.
   • Each poem must appear in the file twice.
   • Each poem must be on a separate page (Exception: For the Porad haiku contest only, you may put multiple poems on a single page)
   • Each page must include the name of the contest in the upper-right corner of the page. If you are submitting to the Aden contest, include the name of the form that you used for the poem on that page beneath the contest name.
   • Include your name, address, and email in the upper-right corner of the page on one copy of each poem only.
2. The file must be less than 512,000 bytes (half a megabyte) in size. Most word processing documents are a fraction of this size.

For a sample Stafford contest file, click here. For a sample Porad (Haiku) contest file, click here.

Submitting the Prepared File

Once your file has been prepared, use the appropiate link below to upload your file to the WPA.

• William Stafford contest
• Francine Porad contest
• Carl Aden contest
• Charlie Proctor contest

Making Payment

Once you have submitted your poem(s), please use the appropiate link below to make your payment.

• William Stafford Contest
  1 poem | 2 poems | 3 poems | 4 poems | 5 poems | 6 poems | 7 poems | 8 poems | 9 poems | 10 poems
• Francine Porad Contest (haiku)
  1 poem | 2 poems | 3 poems | 4 poems | 5 poems | 6 poems | 7 poems | 8 poems | 9 poems | 10 poems
• Carlin Aden Contest
  1 poem | 2 poems | 3 poems | 4 poems | 5 poems | 6 poems | 7 poems | 8 poems | 9 poems | 10 poems
• Charlie Proctor Contest
  1 poem | 2 poems | 3 poems | 4 poems | 5 poems | 6 poems | 7 poems | 8 poems | 9 poems | 10 poems

The WPA Online Payment system enables the WPA to track entries and payments. The financial processing portion of this system is handled by PayPal. Your financial information (credit card number, bank account number, etc) is not disclosed to the Washington Poets Association.

Judging

Judging is anonymous. Once the contest submission period has ended, the contest coordinator will forward copies of the submitted poems without any identifying author information to the judges.

Additional Information

Winning entries (1st, 2nd, and 3rd place poems) will be published in the WPA journal, Cascade, and on the WPA website.

Washington Poets Association reserves the right to publish all winners and honorable mentions in future anthologies, newsletters, and on the website.

A special awards event will recognize the winners who will have the opportunity to read their award-winning work.

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