Announcing 2020 Spirit First Meditation Poetry Contest

11^th Annual Spirit First Poetry Contest

Deadline: March 31, 2020
First Prize: $200 
Second Prize: $150 
Third Prize: $100

Complete Guidelines:

Spirit First is pleased to announce its 11th Annual Meditation Poetry Contest. Poetry submissions may be of any length and any style but must have a theme of Meditation or Mindfulness. Poems may reflect any discipline, any faith, or none. Poems must be previously unpublished. Poems not on the themes of meditation, mindfulness, stillness, or sacred silence will not be included in this meditation poetry event.

Enter up to three submissions. Poems beyond three submissions will not be considered.

Please submit your poems by email unless you do not have access to the Internet. Poems will be accepted by U.S. Postal Service for those who do not have access to sending through the Internet. All others are requested to be emailed. Poems sent by U.S. Postal Service will not be returned. Poems must be received by March 31, 2020.

Please submit your poems all in one file or inside the body of an email (rather than three poems in three separate files). Please do not send your poem(s) in a PDF (formatting and spacing are lost if your poem is sent in a PDF).  Be sure to include the author's name, address, telephone number, and email address. There is no cost to enter this contest. Submissions must be received no later than March 31, 2020. Please note: We are sorry to say we are unable to provide personal evaluations/reviews of individual poems. 

Winners will be announced on or around July 31, 2020. Winning poems will be published on the Spirit First website at www.spiritfirst.org, the Spirit First Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/thespiritfirstgroup, the Spirit First blog at http://spiritfirst.blogspot.com/, and in a Spirit First newsletter (authors retain full rights to their poems).

How to submit:

By email: send to meditate@spiritfirst.org.

By U.S. Postal Service (for those unable to send by email), send to the following address:
          Spirit First Poetry Contest
          PO Box 8076
          Langley Park, MD 20787

To all our participating poets, thank you for your beautiful words. We look forward to reading your poems!

Join us!

Facebook 

Meetup

Our Website 

2019 First-Place Winner Diana Poulos-Lutz

SEA GLASS

by Diana Poulos-Lutz

I found sea glass

at the shore,

washed up on the sand

with broken shells,

still wet,

sparkling and shining

green, brown,

and blue.

I picked up a piece

and ran my fingers softly

over the flat surface

and firmly

over the edges.

The glass did not

cut or hurt,

as it had been tumbled

and tossed in ocean waters

for some years—

how many I’m not sure.

I picked up some more

pieces and decided to walk

in the water

and on the sand

for miles and days and years.

I want the sand to do

the same to me.

I asked the ocean

to smooth my jaded mind,

so that I won’t

hurt,

as readily,

as broken

glass that has never met the sea.

-----------------------------------------------

Diana Poulos-Lutz started her journey of mindfulness and meditation as she began long walks along the beaches of Long Island, NY throughout the seasons. As a photographer, and an admirer of the natural world, she began writing poetry to express those moments of reflection and spiritual connection.

Diana has a B.A., M.A. in Political Science from Long Island University as well as an MPhil, Master of Philosophy in Politics, from the New School for Social Research. She has taught Political Science courses for several years at Long Island University. Some of her areas of interest are women's rights, civil rights, democratic theory, and civic engagement. Diana is an active citizen and currently works at a public high school. 

Diana’s poems have recently been featured on literary and media sites such as New Verse News and Pantsuit Nation. She has performed as a featured poet at various venues on Long Island and she is the winner of the 2019 Nassau County Poet Laureate Society poetry contest. Diana's poetry is inspired by her deep connection to the natural world, along with her desire to promote equality, peace, mindfulness, and empowerment. You can find more of her poetry as well as her nature photography at: https://www.facebook.com/dpouloslutz

2019 Second-Place Winner James Crews

WINTER MORNING

by James Crews

When I can no longer say thank you

for this new day and the waking into it,

for the cold scrape of the kitchen chair

and the ticking of the space heater glowing

orange as it warms the floor near my feet,

I know it is because I've been fooled again

by the selfish, unruly man who lives in me

and believes he deserves only safety

and comfort. But if I pause as I do now,

and watch the streetlights outside winking

off one by one like old men closing their

cloudy eyes, if I listen to my tired neighbors

slamming car doors hard against the morning

and see the steaming coffee in their mugs

kissing their chapped lips as they sip and

exhale each of their worries white into

the icy air around their faces—then I can

remember this one life is a gift each of us

was handed and told to open: Untie the bow

and tear off the paper, look inside

and be grateful for whatever you find

even if it is only the scent of a tangerine

that lingers on the fingers long after you've finished eating it.

-------------------------------------

James Crews lives on part of an organic farm with his husband in Vermont. He is the author of two collections of poetry, The Book of What Stays (Prairie Schooner Prize, 2011) and Telling My Father (Cowles Prize, 2017), and his work has appeared in Ploughshares, Raleigh Review, Crab Orchard Review and The New Republic, among other journals. Crews also recently edited the anthology, Healing the Divide: Poems of Kindness and Connection (Green Writers Press, 2019). He teaches creative writing at SUNY-Albany.

2019 Third-Place Winner Joanne Esser

PRAYER TO BECOME SOIL

by Joanne Esser

Even after the storm that rips leaves

From the trees, even as branches crack

And fall, through the empty limbs

The sky remains. Under it, I stand

Empty-handed. I pray: Make me

Into something solid that will last.

Crumble me into soil beneath that sky,

Dark, thick, moist. Composed of

What has fallen apart. Humble

Enough to embrace the smallest seed.

Help me be modest, quiet, patient

So new roots might push in.

No longer do I want to be the plant,

The flower or fruit. Now is my time

Of stillness, to be the black ground

From which brighter things emerge.

As my blossoming ends, may I become

That which holds what is about to begin.

-------------------------------

Joanne Esser writes poetry and nonfiction in Minneapolis, Minnesota. She has also been a teacher of young children for over thirty years. She earned an MFA in Creative Writing from Hamline University and published a chapbook of poems, I Have Always Wanted Lightning, with Finishing Line Press in 2012. Her full-length collection of poetry, Humming At The Dinner Table” will be published in October 2019 by Finishing Line Press. Other recent work appears in Common Ground Review, Nostos, Welter, Gyroscope Review, Miramar and Passager, among other journals.

2019 Editor's Choice Award Winner Ann Glumac

MATINS

by Ann Glumac

I worship in the early dawn,

an ecumenical affair.

The muezzin is a warbler of some kind,

his call a whisper that darts and weaves

through the soft green leaves of June.

The water is temple,

chapel, mosque; a holy,

holy place

where I am supplicant.

I breathe in the Holy Spirit,

incense of lilacs, apple blossoms,

Balm-o-Gileads,

the clean smell of fish.

I give thanks. For the bindi

of the red-winged blackbird.

For the tapers of river grass

lit by the rising sun.

For the pollen dusted like blessing ash

in quiet bays and inlets.

I am infused with grace,

so grateful for this moment

I thank them all:

God, Allah, the Creator, Yahweh.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

One cannot be agnostic in this boat.

-------------------------------

Ann Glumac lives on the banks of the St. Louis River in Duluth, Minnesota, where she is inspired every time she looks out the window. A writer and a poet, a trainer and a consultant, she currently is at work on her second collection. Ann also edits poetry manuscripts and conducts poetry workshops.

She writes to capture moments large and small, to make sense of them and to share them with others—creating, with her readers, a common experience, a place they go together. While composed of words, her poems owe their vitality to this interaction between writer and reader.

Her 2014 debut collection, A Skim of Ice on Still Water, was a finalist for a Northeastern Minnesota Book Award.

2019 Editor's Choice Award Winner Derek Hanebury

BANGKOK JEWEL

by Derek Hanebury

Taking a break from the sun and the great souvenir search, I unzip and stand

facing the urinal leaking two Thai teas I downed an hour ago

with a platter of khao phat Amerikan

when something shifts in the edge of my eye; 

remembering the green viper I watched yesterday

scale the plaster wall and coil into a hole above the door, I am relieved

to recognize a woman spidered onto the floor, spread out like an opened lotus,

her thin arm washing the polished cement with wide-circling swipes of a wet rag.

She keeps her head bowed to her work just as I keep my eyes forward now, observing

stippled plaster and wondering if she’ll wait for this white guy to finish his whizz before

she finishes her floor. I push a little harder when I see she is circling in my direction,

angling under the row of urinals, but those Thai teas were tall and my poor tourist’s bladder is

still stretched like a water balloon full to bursting. What can I do, but pretend she isn’t there on

the floor, halfway closer to me now that I can see the strands of grey in her dark hair,

the thin ropes of muscle braided through her tawny arm?

Mother? Grandmother? The dutiful Thai wife doomed to clean the floors of public bathrooms

while her husband hunkers down at the bar?

Just under the whish of my pissing, I hear it then, a whispering sound subtle and soothing

as water over sand, the words indistinguishable at first beneath the flowing water but growing

now that I tune in, her every outbreath singing it to herself:

Om Mani Padme Hum, Om Mani Padme Hum, Om Mani Padme Hum.

A Buddhist then, polishing the floor while chanting a mantra to scrub the illusions from her eyes,

not just cleaning a floor but scraping the sticky samskara off the Buddha self,

using every breath to find the jewel in the lotus. And I wonder how real I am to her now, or if I

even exist as she handmops the floor in slow circles; like ripples in a koi pond, she moves

towards my feet, my face flushing in the steaming Bangkok heat as the waves of her washing

edge the dust from one side of my sandals, the next pass skewing slightly to leave me marooned

on a small island of dry concrete,

surrounded by a tide of Om Mani Padme Hum, Om Mani Padme Hum;

not sure if my eyes are open or closed then, my exposed self awash in the mantra and the energy

of this bird-boned woman serving her Lord, turning the room into an ocean, into a temple,

with her Om Mani Padme Hum, Om Mani Padme Hum, until she is somewhere behind me, and

with a shudder and a shake,

I’m finally empty.

---------------------------

Derek Hanebury is a Canadian writer of poetry, fiction, and creative non-fiction. His first book of poetry, Nocturnal Tonglen (Ekstasis), was released in 2006, and his second volume, Songs for Aging Children, will be forthcoming soon. His poems have also been published in numerous magazines and broadcasted on CBC radio. He has a Master’s Degree in Creative Writing from UBC and taught writing at North Island College on Vancouver Island until his retirement in 2017.

2019 Micro Poetry Award Winner Charles Rossiter

THAT PLACE

by Charles Rossiter

Doing perfectly nothing,
doing nothing perfectly.

Either way

is a good way to be.
---------------------------------------

Charles Rossiter, National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship Recipient, hosts the twice-monthly podcast series at www.PoetrySpokenHere.com .  His work has been featured on NPR, at the Chicago Blues Festival and the Dodge Festival in NJ. Recent books include: All Over America: Road Poems; Winter Poems; Cold Mountain 2000: Han Shan in the City, Lakeside Poems and the just-released Green Mountain Meditations, all from FootHills publishing.

We are pleased to announce the winning entries for our tenth annual Spirit First Meditation Poetry Contest. This year we received 1,347 poems from 48 states in the U.S. and from 41 foreign nations, including Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Botswana, Bulgaria, Canada, Denmark, England, Germany, Ghana, India, Indonesia, Iraq, Ireland (Republic of Ireland), Japan, Kenya, Lagos, Malawi, Malta, Myanmar, Nigeria, Northern Ireland, Pakistan, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Qatar, Scotland, South Africa, Southern Cameroons, Spain, Sri Lanka, Syria, Taiwan, Tanzania, The Netherlands, Trinidad and Tobago, Tunisia, Turkey, Ukraine, and Zimbabwe (we also received numerous poems without location indicated).

We are always thrilled—and amazed—to have the participation of so many meditation and mindfulness poets from all over the world, and we are honored by your presence from home and abroad. This poetry event is such a great joy for all of us at Spirit First, and especially for our devoted judging committee (a group that grows every year!).

This year we again present a Micro Poetry Award. Our micro poetry category includes poems up to about 20 words, encompassing short forms such as haiku, tanka, and senryu but also including short poems without fixed rules. Every poem received is considered in our main contest, but we then also set aside short forms for a special category award. This year we selected two poems for our Editor’s Choice Award.

Thank you to all the many beautiful poets who participated—please know that we deeply appreciate every poem, every word. Your writing on the themes of meditation and mindfulness is important to the world, and what a great work it was to select winners from so many exquisite, meaningful poems (incredibly difficult work). Thank you for being part of who we are. We hope you will join us for our 2020 Spirit First Meditation Poetry Contest—we look forward to reading your words and being touched by your spiritual journey.

Thank you to our judging committee for your thoughtful, dedicated work. 

Congratulations to all our winners!

Announcing 10th Annual Spirit First Poetry Contest

10^th Annual Spirit First Poetry Contest

Deadline: February 28, 2019 (midnight)
First Prize: $200
Second Prize: $150
Third Prize: $100

Complete Guidelines:

Spirit First is pleased to announce its 10th Annual Meditation Poetry Contest. Poetry submissions may be of any length and any style but must have a theme of Meditation or Mindfulness. Poems may reflect any discipline, any faith, or none. Poems must be previously unpublished. Poems not on the themes of meditation, mindfulness, stillness, or sacred silence will not be included in this meditation poetry event. 

Enter up to three submissions. Poems beyond three submissions will not be considered.

Please submit your poems by email unless you do not have access to the Internet. Poems will be accepted by U.S. Postal Service for those who do not have access to sending through the Internet. All others are requested to be emailed. Poems sent by U.S. Postal Service will not be returned. Poems must be received by February 28, 2019.

Please submit your poems all in one file or inside the body of an email (rather than three poems in three separate files). Please do not send your poem(s) in a PDF (formatting and spacing are lost if your poem is sent in a PDF).  Be sure to include the author's name, address, telephone number, and email address. There is no cost to enter this contest. Submissions must be received no later than February 28, 2019. Please note: We are sorry to say we are unable to provide personal evaluations/reviews of individual poems. 

Winners will be announced on or around June 30, 2019. Winning poems will be published on the Spirit First website at www.spiritfirst.org, the Spirit First Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/thespiritfirstgroup, the Spirit First blog at http://spiritfirst.blogspot.com/, and in a Spirit First newsletter (authors retain full rights to their poems).

How to submit:

By email: send to meditate@spiritfirst.org.

By U.S. Postal Service (for those unable to send by email), send to the following address:
          Spirit First Poetry Contest
          PO Box 8076
          Langley Park, MD 20787

To all our participating poets, thank you for your beautiful words. We look forward to reading your poems!

Join us!

Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/thespiritfirstgroup?ref=hl

Meetup at http://www.meetup.com/Spirit-First-Meditations/

Our website:  www.SpiritFirst.org

2018 1st-Place Winner G.G. Silverman

Meditation at the Waterfall of the Gods

by G.G. Silverman

We wondered how it would change us,

   the roar of an ancient river
as it hurtled from a cliff’s edge
        and raged into the mist.
           We stood there for mere
                moments, snapped a
            photo we’ll forget later,
        because eternity
             cannot be captured.

We cannot fathom

how this precipice was
        graven by aeons, how
    this river’s cold bed
          cradled its

child for

        seven thousand years,
what motes we
    are under the sky.

 
                Gods were once brought here
             to drown, and so we
        brought our sorrows,
            made paper boats
                 of grocery lists and death
        notices and overdue
                bills, then
            set them free on the river.

The waters hummed
        the secret
                 to everything,
   
                   surrender,
       surrender,
                 surrender.

G.G. Silverman practices walking meditation in wild or natural settings as frequently as she can. Her favorite place to experience nature’s raw power is the Pacific Northwest coast. G.G.'s writing was most recently nominated for the Best Small Fictions anthology, among other honors, and has appeared in Corvid Queen, So to Speak feminism + language + art, The Journal of Compressed Creative Arts, The Iron Horse Literary Review, The Seventh Wave, Iconoclast, Ellipsis Literature & Art, and more. She is currently at work on a short story collection as well as her third novel. She is also a visual artist and practices improvisational theater, which she believes is another form of connecting more deeply to one’s inner truth. To learn more, please go to www.ggsilverman.com.

2018 2nd-Place Winner Levi Andrew Noe

A Long Journey By Sea

by Levi Noe

From the helm

       of this pitching ship

   I cry to Poseidon and 

Yahweh, Jesus,

       Buddha, Krishna, Kali

              Allah, Vishnu, Anu, Gaia,

anyone! who’s listening:

                    How far

                            have I to go?

                      How much

                            have I to give?

                Until You 

                   will let me in.

I have all the charts,

      I followed the stars, I’ve read

           all the Words about the journey.

                             I should be There by now,

                     but still the Undying Land eludes me.

            Could You send me a sign?

                             A dove,

                       like You did for Noah.

                                                     A dream,

                                like You gave Gilgamesh.

                                    It seems all You’ve given me 

                        are these questions.     

              Is it learning or

                        unlearning 

                   that will stop the storm?

       Is it praying ceaselessly

               or pure silence

                          that will bring peace

                    to these waves?

 I assumed the deathless

                         was my destiny, but 

                                       I haven’t received an invitation.

                                                Supplies are nearly dry.

                                   A storm is coming and I’m still waiting. 

                  I am the only voice I hear.

                        I’ve tried everything

                                    apart from drowning.

                        Is that how this separation ends?

             By breathing the ocean in. 

Levi Andrew Noe was born and raised in Denver, Colorado. He is a writer, wanderer, yogi, entrepreneur, and amateur oneironaut. His flash fiction collection Rain Check was published in August 2016 from Truth Serum Press. His flash fiction, short stories, creative non-fiction and poetry can be found in Connotation Press, Boston Literary Magazine, Bartleby Snopes, and Literary Orphans, among many others. Levi is the editor in chief and founder of the podcast Rocky Mountain Revival Audio Art Journal.
Twitter: @LeviAndrewNoe,
                @RockyMtnRevival
Website: http://leviandrewnoe.com