Susan Maxwell Campbell, Mansfield won the Fort Worth Poetry Society William D. Barney Memorial Chapbook Contest with her manuscript, “Just Looking.” The judge was Dr. Kathryn Artuso. Dr. Artuso is a professor in the English Department of Westmont College in Santa Barbara, California.
Robert Schinzel, a PST member living in Argyle, TX, was the winner of the 2023 Catherine Case Lubbe Manuscript Prize, with his manuscript, “When Stone Speaks.” With Bob, we travel through the Grand Canyon and across the Colorado plateau. His words transform the landscape. A lake becomes a giant centipede, a wildfire stampedes the underbrush. His keen observations offer history, science, and imagery—and depict the relationships between stone, humans, and topography.
Courtney O’Banion Smith won the 2022 Catherine Case Lubbe Manuscript Prize with her book, “In Fidelity”
How do you stay faithful? What do you do after you are betrayed or you betray another? Winner of the 2022 Catherine Case Lubbe Manuscript Award sponsored by the Poetry Society of Texas, In Fidelity explores how we remember the past and imagine the future while remaining true to our memories, ourselves, and each other.
Diane Glancy won the 2023 William D. Barney Memorial Chapbook Contest. “Jawbone”
Jawbone is a 40-page poetry chapbook that won the William Barney Chapbook Prize, 2023, from the Fort Worth Poetry Society. The author, Diane Glancy is professor emerita at Macalester College. Among Glancy’s awards are two National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships, an American Book Award, a Minnesota Book Award, an Oklahoma Book Award, a Pablo Neruda Prize for Poetry, and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Native Writers’ Circle of the Americas. Glancy lives in north central Texas where many tribes camped, Apache, Comanche, Wichita, Waco, Kiowa. Her other books and awards are listed on her website, www.dianeglancy.com.
Eric Blanchard won the 2022 William D. Barney Memorial Chapbook Contest with his manuscript, “Beware of Poet.” From poems like Ode to a Sidewalk to Morning Breath, Eric’s sly humor and unusual take on ordinary things may remind you somewhat of Billy Collins.
Christine Irving won the 2021 Catherine Case Lubbe Manuscript Prize with her book, “Predator/Prey. Christine navigates the natural world in all its complexities, sometimes serious, sometimes playful, and always with elegant simplicity, musical language, and magnificent metaphors.
https://tinyurl.com/n8u7djh9
2021 – Wm Barney Chapbook winner: Loretta Diane Walker
“From the Cow’s Eyes and Other Poems”
The judge, Manny English, said: “…one can feel that the author has experienced life from different perspectives and possesses deep emotions that are searching for understanding.”
Catherine L’Herisson was the winner of the 2020 William D. Barney Memorial Chapbook Contest sponsored by the Fort Worth Poetry Society in cooperation with the Poetry Society of Texas. Here’s what the judge said about Catherine’s prize-winning work: “I loved (this) chapbook . . . There were some really good chapbooks submitted, but I kept coming back to (this one.) It was clearly the best. I’d love to get a printed copy when it is published.”David Allen, Poetry Society of Indiana, retired journalist,Judge, 2020 William D. Barney Chapbook Contest. Catherine’s book is available on Amazon at: https://tinyurl.com/y4og58hq
Michael Minassian was the 2020 winner of the Catherine Case Lubbe Manuscript Prize with his entry, “A Matter of Timing.” It was judged by Dr. Ben Furnish. The poems in Minassian’s book are occupied by ordinary people, as well as figures from history, fable, and mythology, all of them struggling with the human conditions of life, death, love, compassion, and suffering. They are presented with rich language and startling imagery.
The book is available at Amazon: https://tinyurl.com/yhu6j254
The 2019 Catherine Case Lubbe Manuscript Contest was awarded to J. Todd Hawkins for This Geography of Thorns: Blues Poetry from the Mississippi Delta & Beyond.
Adam Tavel, professor of English at Wor-Wic Community College in Salisbury MD, and this year’s judge, writes: Haunted, meditative, and lyrical, This Geography of Thorns takes readers on an engrossing, Dantesque sojourn through the American south in search of that most authentic of American artforms: the blues. …(the poems) recognize the grim historical legacies of both slavery and sharecropping, honoring the tenacity of African-American communities to make art in the face of oppression, injustice, and terror. … [P]age after page stuns with rich descriptions of southern landscapes, reminding us that poetry, music, and our very survival are inescapably rooted in the survival of our ecology. The poems offer vignettes of the 1930s as well as of today’s South. http://www.jtoddhawkins.com/bookstore.html.
Loretta Diane Walker Honored (Click link to view letter of Loretta Diane Walker’s Induction into The Texas Institute of Letters 2020)
Now Available: A History of Poetry Society of Texas
Budd Mahan’s book on the history of PST has been printed. Copies are available for $15.00 from Budd at 7059 Spring Valley Road, Dallas, TX 75254.
PST Member J. Paul Holcomb Proclaimed
Lewisville’s First Poet Laureate
PST member and councilor J. Paul Holcomb was proclaimed Lewisville’s First Poet Laureate in 2014.
Congratulations, Paul!