Tag Archives: Maria W. Faust Sonnet Contest

Maria W. Faust Sonnet Contest: New Anthology & Virtual Closing Event for the 2020 Contest on August 8, 2020

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Five years in the making, a new anthology of winning sonnets from the Maria W. Faust Sonnet Contest is now published! The finished volume is filled inventive and moving sonnets, and I am honored to have two of my own included in this gorgeous volume that can be held in the hand, read in the open air of the garden, considered, and returned to again.

Copies of the anthology can be purchased by emailing entries@sonnetcontest.org.

Tim and I always try to attend the Closing Event for the yearly contest in Winona, Minnesota. This year, an inventive online event will be held–and you are invited! Below, the text from a recent email I received from the program administrator.

I hope that you are enjoying these long, light-filled days! Leslie

Traditionally, the Maria W. Faust Sonnet Contest has held an annual Closing Event in partnership with the Great River Shakespeare Festival (GRSF). Because we are unable to host a large in-person event this year, we are taking the opportunity to re-invent the celebration. What does that mean?

Potentially the largest audience ever! The Closing Event is where the winning sonnets are publicly announced each year. Because this will be an online event, winners will be able to join GRSF actors in reading their sonnets.

We have contacted all of the winners and many are excited to participate.We hope that you will join us, too. The link below will allow you to view the event on your computer through Zoom. If you are not available at that time, you will be able to view the video of the event on our website at a later date.

 Please Join UsSaturday | August 8 | 11:00am Central Timehttps://us02web.zoom.us/j/85370783611?pwd=WVNNWXZ3MjgxVEV4OG5FajdOS1RDUT09
Maria W. Faust (Photo courtesy of Ted Haaland)

2019 Maria W. Faust/Great River Shakespeare Festival Sonnet Contest Celebration!

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As we do most years, Tim and I traveled this summer to attend the Maria W. Faust Sonnet Contest Celebration, part of the Great River Shakespeare Festival held on the Winona State University campus.

This year, more than 400 sonnets were submitted from poets from all over–many from the Mississippi River region, many from across the U.S., and each year more and more from abroad–this year submissions were received from nine countries outside the United States.

If you click on the link above, you’ll find a list of winning sonnets as well as poets’ names and home towns. I was quite surprised — and very pleased! — to learn that one of my own submitted sonnets, “Zebras in Sunlight,” is in the list. I was very pleased (and not at all surprised) that a fine sonnet by a poet-friend, Scott Lowery, was in the highest winners’ circle!

As an aside, I have realized that since the time I first learned of this sonnet showcase in 2013, I have truly begun to “think in sonnets.” I have written poems in this form for many years now and then, but I just did a loose count and realized that in the past six years I have written more than 100 new sonnets. I know for certain this would not have happened without this annual nudge from my friends in Winona. Thank you!

But I digress! The prelude to the event was music by the ensemble, Flutistry. This group of five flutists–Janet Heukeshoven, Heidi Bryant, Arlene Boll, Lisa Ramsey and Amanda Wenzel–wove the sonic spell that prepared us all for the music of the sonnets to come. Their program for the day ranged from a composition by William Byrd–a contemporary of William Shakespeare–to more modern works. All were rendered with verve and panache, as you can sense from the inset video clip, primitive though my videography skills are.


Valsette, J. Anderson
Ashokan Farewell, Jay Ungar
Mississippi Rag, W.H. Krell
Earl of Oxford's Marche, William Byrd
Fascinating Rhythm, George Gershwin
Summertime, George Gershwin

After the music, everyone headed in to the theater.

Many thanks to all the people who have made this event a summertime essential for so many of us: present and past Winona Poet Laureates Ken McCullough, Emilio DeGrazia, and James Armstrong; readers from the GRSF acting company, including Artistic Director Doug Scholz-Carlson; Heidi Bryant, webmaster; the musicians of Flutistry; the hundreds of poets who submit work each year; and especially Ted Haaland, who supports this annual celebration of new poetry as a living memorial to his beloved late wife, Maria W. Faust.

LESLIE

News Flash! I Will Be Reading in Winona, Minnesota on July 9th!

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Are YOU curious about what’s happening at the Blue Heron Coffeehouse this summer?

If you know the river town of Winona, Minnesota, you know it is pulsing with exciting arts opportunities, spectacular natural beauty, and delicious opportunities for snacking and dining. In fact, their motto is “Surprisingly Weird, Incredibly Entertaining.”

If you fancy a scenic drive to this part of the state, I would like to suggest two poetry-rich dates for your calendar. The first is 7:00 p.m. on Tuesday, July 9, 2019 at the Blue Heron Coffeehouse, when I will be reading from my collection, CONCERTINA.

The second event is later in July, on Saturday the 20th at 10:30 a.m. on the Winona State University Campus. Each year, Tim and I like to hear the winning sonnets of the annual Maria W. Faust Sonnet Contest read expressively by members of the Great River Shakespeare Festival. (The link above has more details on the 2019 capstone event as well as postings of the winning sonnets from past years.)

We will probably also visit the gardens and paintings at one of our favorite museums, the Minnesota Marine Art Museum, located right on the Mississippi. I am especially keen to see the exhibition up by justly celebrated photographer Alec Soth called “Sleeping by the Mississippi.”

Hoping to see you there, once or even twice! Happy summer travels!

Sharing Good News: Poet Ted Haaland & the Maria W. Faust Sonnet Celebration on August 4, 2018

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Ted Haaland: River Arts Alliance Member of the Month

Ted Haaland discovered his art later in life after losing his wife Maria W. Faust to cancer in 2011. Her deep appreciation for the art of poetry awakened his muse and he began writing poems every day.

With a collection of over 7,000 poems to his name, Ted is a strong believer in the New Formalists concepts of poetry, he admires rhyme and meter and their use in all poetic forms; he writes sonnets, of course, but also haiku, limericks, longer poetic forms and two-line “zingers.” Often amused by the strange twists of word definitions and usage, he ventures that he has never met a pun he didn’t like, which is to be expected, since the pun is the beginning of metaphor and metaphor is the foundation of poetry.

In 2012 Ted asked and received permission to direct the Great River Shakespeare Festival Sonnet Contest and renamed it the Maria W. Faust Sonnet Contest of the Great River Shakespeare Festival. He directs the contest today with the help of the three Winona Poets Laureate, who serve as judges, David Marshall, who organizes entries for the judges, and Heidi Bryant, who directs communications and manages the online entry process and website.

Ted has seen the Maria W. Faust Sonnet Contest grow to include not only sonnets from almost all of the United States and its territories and possessions, but also from nations around the world. The contest is now widely internationally known and highly rated in literary magazines and on the Internet.

 

 

Winners of the 2018 Sonnet Contest will be announced at the Awards Ceremony on Saturday, August 4th to coincide with the end of the GRSF season. The public is invited to meet in the Dorothy B. Magnus Black Box Theatre in the Performing Arts Center on the Winona State University Campus at 11:00 am to hear winning sonnets read (some by members of the GRSF acting company), meet some of the winning poets, and enjoy snacks and music by Flutistry starting at 10:30 am. All are welcomed to attend this free event.

This year, Tim and I are planning to attend the readings for the third time. From there, we’ll head across the river to Maiden Rock, Wisconsin to celebrate our 30th wedding anniversary. Here is a photo of us on our anniversary last year, in our own garden, just before motoring off north to the American Swedish Institute for the day.

Peanut will be staying across the street, vying for Janet’s attention with half-sister, Sophie!

Wishing you all the late summer pleasures of these dog days!  LESLIE

Newsflash! Maria W. Faust Winning Sonnets Announced–And One Was My Poem, “Carp”!

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Goldfish

On July 30, 2016, Tim and I traveled to Winona, Minnesota for our annual treat–listening to the reading of the winning sonnets from the Maria W. Faust Sonnet Contest–a closing event for the famous Great River Shakespeare Festival. We then spent the day along the Mississippi River to celebrate our anniversary which falls in early August.

Since I first learned about this contest in 2013, I have been not only impressed by the great variety, beauty, and power of the winning poems, I have begun, much more frequently, to “think in sonnet form.” What I mean by that is that the meter, rhyme schemes, and rhetorical structures offered by the sonnet form(s) are now etched more deeply into my poetic consciousness. Consequently, while I have been writing sonnets for thirty years, I write many more of them these days–Shakespearian, Petrarchan, the odd “curtal sonnet” (with homage to Gerard Manly Hopkins), and fourteen-line poems I call “sonnet-like objects.”) Of course, with all of these sonnets arriving, every year I select a few to enter in the contest, despite knowing that the competition is steep.

This year, I was surprised and pleased to get a phone call the week prior from Ted Haaland, husband of the late Maria W. Faust, who runs the contest. He told me that my own poem, “Carp,” written this spring, was one of this year’s winners, and asked whether I would like to read it at the event. It was great fun.

A list of winners from all nine years, and the texts of winning sonnets for 2015 and 2016 can be found HERE. For those of you who want to try your own hand, the site also has a very helpful section on the mechanics of sonnet creation. Contestant poems can be received sometime in January for the 2017 contest–you can also bookmark the site and check back in the New Year for the exact date.

Meanwhile, do enjoy reading the work online, and consider purchasing the beautifully made anthology showcasing winning poems from the first five years (2008-2012) of the contest.

sonnet Cover Melody

(Copies can be ordered from Ted Haaland, whose contact information can be found at the link above.)

And when you think of Winona, nestled into the limestone bluffs next to the storied waters of the Mississippi, think, too, of the annual movement of fine sonnets, from all over the nation and beyond our borders, flowing into the little jewel of an art town.

Enjoy the waning days of summer!  LESLIE

Flowers Initials