And just like that, the submission period for the 2023 Pinesong Awards are open. Can you believe it? Have you selected the poems you’re going to enter? Still working on final edits?
This year, I am incredibly excited to announce a brand new contest – the Jean Williams Poetry of Disability, Disease, and Healing. Over the past few years, we have all been made more aware of what a precious gift health is, and what a luxury it was for many of us to not have been aware already. We invite you to share your poems of up to 36 lines about the body and how it betrays us; on the journey back to being well; on disbability and disease; on health – physical and mental – in all it forms.
Priscilla Webster-Williams, for whose mother the contest is named, offers her poem Occupational Therapy at the TB Sanitarium as a beautiful introduction to the contest. For more reading (which I know we all crave), check out this New York Times Article, highlighting the work of 10 poets with disabilities.
The judge for the Jean Williams Poetry of Disability, Disease, and Healing is Stacy R. Nigliazzo. She is a Houston nurse, an MFA candidate at the University of Houston Creative Writing Program, and the award winning author of three full-length poetry collections, Scissored Moon, Sky the Oar, and My Borrowed Face (Press 53). She recently joined the faculty at Baylor College of Medicine where she teaches narrative practice in the Humanities Expression and Arts Lab (HEAL).
Lumpkin out.
PINESONG AWARDS 