www.camberpress.com/pressreleases/CPPoetryAward.pdf

Camber Press is pleased to announce the return of our poetry chapbook award. Our ethos is to publish contemporary poetry exhibiting lucid delivery while not sacrificing emotional depth, mastery of craft, or originality.

First Prize: $1,000 and publication of chapbook

Submission guidelines:
The winning poet will receive $1,000 and have his or her manuscript published by Camber Press, Inc. Only typed manuscripts no greater than 24 pages of original English-language poems will be considered. Manuscripts must include a cover page listing the author’s name, address, phone number, e-mail address, and manuscript title. Names should not appear anywhere else. A title page with no biographical information and a table of contents should follow. Simultaneous submissions are allowed if Camber Press is immediately notified of acceptance elsewhere. Submissions will be recycled, not returned. Include a self-addressed, stamped postcard if you wish acknowledgment of receipt. A $15 entry fee payable to Camber Press must accompany all submissions. International submissions are $15 provided they are in US funds on a US bank. Submissions must be postmarked no later than August 15, 2009. The winner will be announced no later than November 1, 2009. Include a self-addressed, stamped envelope if you wish to receive a print announcement of the winner. E-mail us at info@camberpress.com for more information. Send entries to:

Camber Press Poetry Award, Suite 3F, 1160 Midland Avenue, Bronxville, NY 10708

Other details:

• If poems in your manuscript have been previously published in literary journals or reviews, please include this information in an acknowledgments page. Any manuscript previously published as a whole in book form is not eligible.
• Multiple manuscripts by the same writer will be accepted if submitted with a corresponding entry fee for each work.
• If the poet’s name is present anywhere on the manuscript aside from the cover page, the entry will be disqualified.
• If the poet needs to refer to his/herself during a poem, a pseudonym must be used.
• Please do not send corrections or additions. The winner will be allowed to make revisions before publication.
• Submissions postmarked after August 15, 2009, will not be considered for the competition.
• Total manuscript pages do not translate to an equal number of book pages. Line length, stanza breaks, book sections, type size, margins, and other factors affect the number of pages a finished book will be. If unsure how many pages your book will be or if your manuscript is too long, visit your local library. Look at Camber Press titles and poetry chapbooks from other publishers. By comparing these with your own poems, you can estimate the approximate book length of your manuscript.
• Covers, tables of contents, dedication pages, acknowledgements pages, etc., do not count toward
the total of 24 pages.
• “No greater than 24 pages” does not mean your manuscript need be 24 pages. To date, no poet submitting 24 pages has won the Camber Press Poetry Chapbook Award. Please think of your best poems first, manuscript flow second, and “24 pages,” if ever, last.
• If you wish to bind your manuscript(s), please use a paperclip. Folders, binders, “bullnose” clips, and staples are not encouraged.
• Submissions will be recycled, not returned. Do not send a return envelope or return postage. Do not send your only copy of your manuscript.
• To be advised of future Camber Press news, please join our e-mail newsletter list at info@camberpress.com. Camber Press will not sell, trade, or distribute your e-mail address to any other company, organization, or individual. We don’t like spam, either. An e-mail to the same address will remove you from our future mailings.

About Mark Doty, final judge

Mark Doty’s Fire to Fire: New and Selected Poems, won the National Book Award for Poetry in 2008. His eight books of poems include School of the Arts, Source, and My Alexandria. He has also published four volumes of nonfiction prose: Still Life with Oysters and Lemon, Heaven’s Coast, Firebird and Dog Years, which was a New York Times bestseller in 2007. Doty’s work has been honored by the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, a Whiting Writers Award, two Lambda Literary Awards and the PEN/Martha Albrand Award for First Nonfiction. He is the only American poet to have received the T.S. Eliot Prize in the U.K., and has received fellowships from the Guggenheim, Ingram Merrill and Lila Wallace/Readers Digest Foundations, and from the National Endowment for the Arts. Doty lives in New York City and in Houston, Texas, where he is John and Rebecca Moores Professor in the graduate program at the University of Houston. In the fall of 2009, he will join the faculty at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey.