Poetry Contest

  • Contest is CLOSED.
  • Opens: December 12, 2023

  • Closes: February 13, 2024

  • Entry Fees: CWC Members: $15.00, Non-members: $20.00

  • Prizes: First Place — $150, Second Place — $75, Third Place — $25

  • Winners Announced: April 16, 2024 

  • One poem of fewer than 50 lines; haiku excluded.

  • Please follow guidelines in Contest Rules and Submission Guidelines.
  • For inquiries or questions, contact Contest Chair.
submit

Junious “Jay” Ward is a poet and teaching artist from Charlotte, NC. He is a National  Slam champion (2018), an Individual World Poetry Slam champion (2019), author of Sing Me A Lesser Wound (Bull City Press 2020) and Composition (Button Poetry 2023).

Jay currently serves as Charlotte’s inaugural Poet Laureate and is a 2023 Academy of merican Poets Laureate Fellow. Ward has attended Breadloaf Writers Conference, Callaloo, The Watering Hole, The Frost Place, and Tin House Winter Workshop. His work can be found in Columbia Journal, Four Way Review, DIAGRAM, Diode Poetry
Journal and elsewhere.

JW Author photo 1.jpg 2024 Poetry judge

Poetry Contest Judge:

Junious “Jay” Ward