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 Last year, the Poetry Center of Chicago took forever to come up with a Juried Reading event, but this year the contest was rushed through like crazy. They only accepted submissions for about two months. To our surprise, they claim to have received nearly 300 submissions in that time, which, if true, means they made a sweet $2000 profit. But for a long time I've felt like the Poetry Center hasn't exactly been honest about their state of affairs, shrouding themselves in secrecy and isolating themselves from the greater poetry scene, so who really knows what is the truth?
From what I understand about the process of a "Juried Reading" contest, sub-judges reject nearly all submissions while only seven submissions are actually forwarded to the judge, which in this case is a guy from New York named Mark Nowak. I don't know what it is about Nowak's photo, but seeing him peering down through his glasses like that scares the hell out of me. Maybe it's that judgmental expression on his face that doesn't seem very inviting to me.
On Wednesday, May 19, at 7:30 PM, the struggling Poetry Center will take a breather from all the "let's declare Natalie Merchant a poet" hype to hold their award ceremony at SAIC Ballroom, 112 S. Michigan Avenue. At least The Poetry Center has accomplished something interesting this time. Even though four white guys and three white gals will represent their "300 submissions", at least we are being introduced to some new and interesting voices this time. It took me quite a while trying to figure out how to navigate their website, but I finally found information about each finalist at poetrycenter.org, so if you click on the name of each finalist, you will get a bio. and sample poem. The finalists are: E.G. Cunningham, Steve Davenport, Adam Day, Julius Kalamarz, Stephen Pettinga, Ruth Williams and Susan Yount.
--CJ Laity, telling it like it really is.
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ChicagoPoetry.com
