2nd Annual Sonnet Contest
2006 Dancing Galliard Awards

Daybreak Press is proud to announce a call for entries to the Second Annual Dancing Galliard Sonnet Contest. We seek original sonnets from new as well as established authors. Sonnets should be fourteen lines with symmetrical prosody (it should have form enough to create a musical effect when read aloud). While the judges are somewhat partial to formal styles, free sonnets are encouraged as well as Shakespearean and Spenserian sonnets; rhyme is only recommended for those mature enough (in the craft of poetry) to handle it professionally.

Contest Guidelines:
$3 reading fee for first five sonnets, $1 each thereafter

Poems must consist of fourteen lines, each line having no less than three beats and no more than six, with metrical structure that works for the particular sonnet (craft it to a plan, and violate that plan only if it really adds to the poem).

Prosody is very important in this contest. Sonnets must have a rhythm that carries from the page to the reader/auditor.

This years panel of judges: David M Pitchford, Chair, 9-year editor and publisher of Prism; Siobhan, author of Through the Longing Daze, co-author Dialogues; Judith Goldhaber, 2005 grand prize winner and author of the award winning Sonnets from Aesop; Robert Seufert, Ph.D., President William F. Short Professor of English Literature at MacMurray College; Ethan Lewis, Ph.D., Professor of English at the University of Illinois at Springfield, coauthor of Conundrums for the Long Weekend and author of Sangamon Poets: A Critical Anthology: (Edwin Mellen Press: Lewiston, New York: Spring 2007); and Corrine Frisch, poetry editor and book reviewer for the Illinois Times, President of the Vachel Lindsay Association, as well as author of numerous chapbooks.

Submit hard copy: 3 copies of each sonnet, one sonnet per page, typed or printed in type (please, no handwriting), with cover letter; name and contact information should be printed/typed on one copy of each poem as well as on the cover letter. Make check/money order out to Pitch-Black LLC. Mail to:

Dancing Galliard Sonnet Contest
Pitch-Black LLC
3232 S. First Street
Springfield, IL. 62703

Prizes:
Grand Prize (awarded for the judges’ choice of a group of three or more sonnets): $100US plus publication in Daybreak’s Prism Quarterly.

Galliard Sonneteer (blue ribbon): $75US, publication in Prism Quarterly.

Journeyman: $50US and publication in Prism Quarterly.

All prize winners will receive award certificates as well as one copy of the Prism Quarterly issue in which the winners are announced and the sonnets showcased.

Entries not chosen for prizes may be chosen for publication – entrants will be notified and offered the option of publication.

(Pitch-Black LLC reserves the right to make no award(s) should no entry be deemed suitable for publication.)

Deadlines:
All entries must be postmarked by 31 October 2006.. Winners will be notified on or before 31 December 2006. Winners will be announced on the website, and winning sonnets showcased in the first Prism Quarterly issue of 2007.

Submission:
Snail Mail: submissions are accepted by postal mail in standard manuscript format (i.e. one-inch margins, readable fonts, double spaced pages, neatly typed or printed, etc.).. Please include cover letter of no more than one page; include email and contact information. SASE for response; manuscripts will be shredded and recycled.. Mail to:

Dancing Galliard Sonnet Contest
c/o Pitch-Black LLC
3232 South First Street
Springfield, IL 62703