Dogwood Prize
I just won the Dogwood Prize from the University of Fairfield in CT. I’m thrilled, needless to say, and delighted that the judge was Marilyn Nelson, someone I’ve admired from afar for a long time (not least because she teaches now and then at West Point). They gave the poem a Pushcart Nomination, too, and I haven’t had one of those in ten years, so it’s very heartening!
And this, right after I wrote a radio essay about NOT winning prizes. I’m not sure whether I’m allowed to post it or if that constitutes publication — it will be in Dogwood’s 2007 issue, in May. I think I won’t risk it. If you’d like to see it, I can e-mail you a copy. It’s not one of my regular personal-narrative poems, it’s about Edward Hopper and arrived out of thin air one day when I was at my writer’s group doing timed free-writes.
The moral of this story is: you can’t win if you don’t send out your poems. I stopped for about six years and kept wondering (vaguely) why I wasn’t winning things or getting published. I got very jealous of the people who were winning. Then I figured it out.
And remember — if you’re one of my students, I will take you out for dinner when you receive your 100th rejection letter. Something to aim for…
xox M.