New York, NY (May 31, 2018)—Two students have been named the winners of the Golden Shovel Anthology International Poetry Competition: Stephanie Yen from Beachwood, Ohio, won the middle/high school division for the poem “Knead” and Amrita Chakraborty from Woodhaven, New York, won the undergraduate division for the poem “Cold Alchemy." Sandra Beasley, Jack Powers, and Ravi Shankar served as second round judges, while Nora Brooks Blakely served as the final judge. The winning poets will receive $500 and $1,000, respectively. More than 150 poems were submitted.
The Golden Shovel Anthology: New Poems Honoring Gwendolyn Brooks (University of Arkansas Press, 2017), edited by Peter Kahn, Ravi Shankar, and Patricia Smith, is a collection of poems inspired by a new poetic form invented by Academy ChancellorTerrance Hayes. In his National Book Award-winning book, Lighthead (Penguin, 2010), Hayes introduced the form, which is a poem that ends every line with a word, in order, from a poem by Gwendolyn Brooks. Hayes wrote the forward for the anthology, which also includes poems by Academy Chancellors Ellen Bass, Brenda Hillman, Marilyn Nelson, Alicia Ostriker, Alberto Ríos, and David St. John.
Sponsors of the prize include Roosevelt University, DePaul University, Young Chicago Authors, The Tishman Review, the Academy of American Poets, and the University of Arkansas Press, which donated books, offered discounted prices, and will publish the winners in the next edition of the anthology.