Sonnet Contest

The Maria W. Faust Sonnet Contest

The Maria W. Faust Sonnet Contest Reception will be the closing Front Porch Event on Saturday, August 3, 2013 in the Winona State University Science Atrium. Mark your calendar to join us that day for a reading of this year’s winning sonnets and meet some of the poets. (The reception is a free event.)

The Great River Shakespeare Festival is now accepting entries for the 2013 Maria W. Faust Sonnet Contest.

The Great River Shakespeare Festival is proud to feature its sixth annual sonnet contest celebrating the memory of a wonderful Winona woman who was a passionate supporter of poetry, the arts and GRSF. Contest activities this year will include the Sonnet Contest itself, which has attracted entrants from around the world, as well as the official award ceremony at a reception which includes the reading of prize-winning sonnets and the recognition of winning poets. Emilio DeGrazia, current Winona Poet Laureate, will serve as Director of this year’s sonnet events.

The Contest will conclude with the GRSF Front Porch Reception and Reading on Saturday, August 3rd at 10:30 AM in the Winona State University Science Atrium. Mark your calendar to join us that day for a reading of this year’s winning sonnets and the opportunity to meet some of the poets. The Reception is a free event.

Cash prizes totaling $1,000 will be awarded in a number of categories including: Best Overall Sonnet, Laureate’s Choice, and Best Local, Best Love, Best Humorous, and Best Youth Sonnets. Entries need not be earmarked for any particular category, although the entrant may so designate.

Ready to give it a try?

Sonnets may be written in Shakespearian, Petrarchan, Spenserian, or non-traditional forms. The Contest fee is $5.00 for up to 3 sonnets. Entries must be sent via First Class mail, and post-marked no later than July 15, addressed to:

GRSF Maria W. Faust Sonnet contest
c/o Emilio DeGrazia
211 W. Wabasha Street
Winona, MN 55987.

Entry fee checks should be made out to

Ted Haaland
Memo’d for: Maria W. Faust Fund

Winners will be announced by August 3rd on this web page. Submissions will not be returned. Please include a separate sheet with your name, address, email, phone number, and titles of the poems. Please, no names on the poems, and please mention where you learned about the Contest.

Click here to read the 2012 winning sonnets and the 2010 winners here.

What is a sonnet?

A sonnet is fourteen lines of iambic pentameter usually in either a Petrarchan, Shakespearian, or Spencerian rhyme scheme. Shakespeare wrote 154 of them. Petrarch wrote 317. We bet you could write just one!

Rhyme Schemes:

What is iambic pentameter?

One of the most common meters in formal poetry (most of Shakespeare’s plays are written in iambic pentameter), it consists of a line roughly ten syllables long with five strong stresses, many of which aternate unstress/stress.

Who can enter the contest?

Anyone and everyone. That means you! (In fairness, please let us know if you are professional poet.)

CATEGORIES

Overall Sonnet
Traditional Sonnet
Non-Traditional Sonnet
Sonnet by a Young Person
Love Sonnet

PRIZES

…oh yes, there are prizes…
and
The chance to have your poem read by a Shakespearean actor at the end of the season, when the winners will be announced.