Tag Archives: Ted Haaland

April 24, 2024 Maria W. Faust Sonnet Contest: Celebrating the Life and Legacy of Ted Haaland on Tuesday, April 30, 2024 at the Blue Heron in Winona, Minnesota

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Ted Haaland (Photo: Mary Farrell)

It is difficult to say a permanent goodbye to a friend. For many, many people, Ted Haaland was not only a friend but an inspiration. When his wife, Maria, died, he channeled his grief into writing poetry–an art form she loved but one that he had never tried before. For the rest of his life, he wrote at least one–sometimes several–poems each day, many in the sonnet form. Ted’s remarkable understanding was that new learning, even in harsh circumstances, is a way forward into new life.

Since Ted’s death on February 17th, I have been thinking a lot about how one person’s actions can have an enormous ripple effect on other people, even those the person has never met. Without the Maria W. Faust Sonnet Contest, I might never have met the friends I have in Winona, including Ted, or been drawn into the rich arts life of this beautiful Minnesota river town.

Without the Sonnet Contest, I might never have been re-energized about the possibilities of the sonnet form. I suspect that this is true for hundreds and hundreds of other poets who have been inspired by the contest’s existence and by the extraordinary examples of contemporary sonnets that win prizes each year. Sonnets are judged blind, and after winners are selected each year, it is clear that the contest is drawing entrants and winners who are young or middle-aged or older; who come from our region or country or from other countries on other continents; who are emerging poets–perhaps who have never had work published before–or are experienced poets with many books published. This contest is truly open to new possibilities within the sonnet form, open to anyone who wishes to try their hand at writing one.

Next Tuesday, Ted’s friends in Winona will be celebrating his life and his living legacy. At the same time, we will be celebrating National Poetry Month and the 2024 launch of the ongoing Maria W. Faust Sonnet Contest which he has endowed. Tim and I plan to attend. We would love to see you there, if you can make it! LESLIE

Dock: Lake Winona (Photo: Leslie Schultz)

Below is the press release for the event on April 30th, provided by the managing director of the contest, Heidi Bryant.

WINONA, MN — The Maria W. Faust Sonnet Contest invites you to celebrate the opening of this year’s contest and National Poetry Month on Tuesday, April 30, 2024, from 6:30 9:00 pm at theBlue Heron Coffeehouse (162 W 2 nd St.). Light refreshments will be served. This event is free and open to the public.

Live music by Flutistry will accompany social time starting at 6:30pm. At 7:00pm, we will celebrate the life and legacy of the contest’s benefactor and former director, Ted Haaland who passed away on February 17th . Ted spent the years following the death of his beloved Maria writing poetry every day. Under his leadership, a small, local contest spread around the world, with the 2023 event receiving 700 sonnets from poets in 43 US states and 16 other countries. Ted’s friends and admirers are invited to say a few words and/or share a poem inhis honor at this event. Friends are also invited to attend a memorial service for Ted on Friday, May 3 rd at 10am at Hoff Funeral Home in Winona.

About the Maria W. Faust Sonnet Contest:
The Maria W. Faust Sonnet Contest is an annual event that welcomes entries from around the world to Winona. Prizes totaling $3,200 are awarded in four categories: Top Four, Regional, Youth, and Laureates’ Choice. The contest honors the memory of Maria W. Faust: a Winona State University graduate in Communications; a twenty-year resident of Winona; an avid supporter of varied local arts; and a lover of poetry. Maria’s husband, Ted Haaland, is the contest’s benefactor, with the goal of keeping Maria’s love of poetry alive in our community and beyond.

The judges’ panel includes Winona’s Poets Laureate James Armstrong, Ken McCullough and Emilio DeGrazia, and Leslie Schultz of Northfield, MN. Heidi Bryant is the managing director of the contest. Great River Shakespeare Festival and River Arts Alliance are partners. To learn more about the Maria W. Faust Sonnet Contest, please visit sonnetcontest.org or email entries@sonnetcontest.org. Information about National Poetry Month is available at poets.org/national-poetry-month.

Welcome Center, Winona, Minnesota (Photo: Leslie Schultz)

Maria W. Faust Sonnet Contest Celebration 2022

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Maria W. Faust (image courtesy of Ted Haaland)

In 2022, for the second time, I was able to join in the judging of the Maria W. Faust Sonnet Contest. This phenomenal contest, now in its tenth year under the patronage of Ted Haaland, husband of the late Maria W. Faust, has grown from 85 entries in 2013. In 2022, 700 sonnets were received from 42 US states plus Washington, DC and 10 other countries—an increase of 15% over 2021. Entries in the Youth category jumped 50%. Through the
contest, poets around the world now know of Winona, Minnesota and its thriving arts community.

The contest encourages the creation of modern poems in sonnet form. It is made possible through the efforts of many, many people: not only the financial patronage and moral support of Ted Haaland (please see below for tributes to Ted in his tenth year as patron of the contest!) but also the dedication and vision of the Great River Shakespeare Festival, the Winona Arts Center, the River Arts Alliance, the contest judges (poets and long-time judges James Armstrong, Ken McCullough, Emilio DeGrazia, as well as, more recently, me,) and the “Sonnet Crew” led by Heidi Bryant and mightily assisted by Johanna Rupprecht, Steve Bachelor, and Jackie Henderson.

Click HERE to view the video of the closing ceremony held at the Winona Arts Center on Saturday, July 30, 2022. Hear a short statement by Contest patron Ted Haaland, as well as each of the sonnets read either by the winning poet or by Doug Scholz-Carlson or actor of the Great River Shakespeare Festival and the musical artistry of Winona’s woodwind quartet Flutistry. The Winona Post covered the event in two separate articles.

Tributes to Ted Haaland:

“Ted’s sponsorship of the Maria Faust Sonnet Contest makes Winona an international sonnet center. Poets who are challenged and inspired by the classical sonnet form now have a place to showcase their art. Thanks to Ted’s vision, area sonneteers—experts and novices alike—have the opportunity to attend poetry events, and young poets are being specifically encouraged to connect with the tradition. Ted has found an excellent way to spread his love of poetry and to help expand Winona’s reputation as an arts destination, and we are so grateful to him.” —Jim Armstrong

“Being a judge of the Maria W. Faust Sonnet Contest has been a boon to me personally, in my own writing. Reading so many sonnets has, by osmosis, calibrated my poem-making apparatus to 14 lines, mostly iambic pentameter; I get in, say what needs to be said, then get out. I know that I will have the opportunity to make several turns at critical junctures within those 14 lines. I still write an occasional longer poem, but the sonnet has converted me. Thanks to Ted Haaland’s generosity, our contest has grown exponentially, in quality and in reputation, and with it the receptivity of Winonans to poetry in general.” —Ken McCullough

“Ted Haaland knew too well how important honest and heart-felt words are. He had many for his beloved Maria and spent many hours honoring her with those he had crafted himself. He has been most generous in passing on to others, including the young, his sense that poetry is a vital sustainer of good life, especially in life’s darkest times.” —Emilio DeGrazia

“Ted Haaland is a generous-minded visionary. His love for his late wife, Maria, who was a
passionate supporter of the arts, has moved him not only to write his own sonnets, but also to celebrate and encourage the creation of new poems in this versatile and powerful sonnet form by more than a thousand poets, people he has never personally met. By his unwavering support, he has created a truly living memorial, not just to Maria, but to powerful comfort that love—and love of true, artfully rendered words—offers to us all.” —Leslie Schultz

Ted’s head is filled with words. Images and music find their place . . .
As the day unfolds, words react to something, escape, focus and
find themselves organized on paper,
Part of the day’s thought and experience, now captured in a poem.
The word supply in Ted’s head is inexhaustible. The words wait for a new
day’s living that will tickle them into action.

What a marvelous contribution Ted continues to make to our welfare honoring his wife in the Maria W. Faust Sonnet Contest.” —David Marshall

Click HERE to read the 2022 winning sonnets in a digital book form.

Celebrating Sonnets: Maria W. Faust Sonnet Contest–2021

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As many of you know, I first got to know the City of Winona, Minnesota through participating in the Maria W. Faust Sonnet Contest as a poet who writes in the sonnet form. Growing out of the successful Great River Shakespeare Festival, established in 2008, the Contest was the brainchild of Winona Poet Laureate James Armstrong and GRSF Artistic Director Doug Scholz-Carlson. Since a small regional start nine years ago, this contest has become a vibrant national and international incubator and celebrator of some of the best sonnets being written by contemporary poets. This expansion has been made possible by the participation of all three of Winona’s Poet Laureates (James Armstrong, Ken McCullough, and Emilio DeGrazia), by the diligent creativity of program administrator Heidi Bryant, and by the extraordinary and far-sighted philanthropy of Ted Haaland, husband of the late Maria W. Faust.

My own first submission was in 2013, and since then this annual contest has been an exciting part of my year, whether or not I had a submitted sonnet honored or not. Each year has been an opportunity to write new sonnets, submit my very best, and plan to attend the Closing Reading to hear sonnets read by actors in the GRSF company or by poets able to attend.

This year, I was honored to be asked to join James Armstrong, Ken McCullough, and Emilio DeGrazia as a judge. This year, a total of 604 poems were submitted from 214 people (poets can submit one, two, or three sonnets per submission.) These poets hail from thirty-five states and ten countries. Of special note this year, entries in the Youth category were up 58 percent, from 31 in 2020 to 49 in 2021!

All poems are judged blind–that it, the judges do not know who the author is, so the poem must speak for itself. With so many truly fine poems–excellent examples of the sonnet form, and, more than that, compelling writing on a large range of subjects, with varying points of view, tone, and use of language–it was very difficult for me to select my top choices, but I did manage to do that by going over the best submissions several times. When the judges met in July to compare lists and select the top winning poems in each category, I was struck by how often judges were in agreement on the merits of poems. I was also delighted that each judge was able to champion four “Laureates Choices” once the top poems were selected. A special pleasure at the end of that process–once all the winners were selected–was learning the names of these fine poets and seeing who had written each poem. Many I recognized through reading their work before: Scott Lowery, Marilyn Taylor, Anna Evans, Jean L. Kreiling, and Barbara Lydecker Crane. Most were new to me. Now all these names are ones I shall look for in the journals I read in the years ahead.

Names of the winning poems poets, and the full text of each sonnet, in a splendid digital version of a program with turning pages, is available on the contest website as well.

Below is a video of a Zoom meeting in which many of the poets were able to read their own winning poems. For those poets with winning poems who were not able to attend, either one of the judges or a member of the Great River Shakespeare Festival Company stepped in, so every winning sonnet can be heard as well as read.

The City of Winona is a bastion of lively writers, artists, and musicians, filled with good conversation, good food, and (of course!) amazing theatre through the annual Great River Shakespeare Festival. Most recently, I was able to learn more about the deeper history of the area through this beautifully written play by Emilio DeGrazia, enhanced by a thoughtful and thought-provoking introduction by Monica DeGrazia.

Stained glass window at the Winona Visitors Center

Wishing you continued adventures–reading, writing, exploring, and enjoying the remaining days of summer!

LESLIE

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