Dancing Poetry Contest
Postmark deadline: April 15, 2024
In honor of Richard Angilly, 1941-2022, co-founder of Dancing Poetry Festival and the Poetic Dance Theater Company, Artists Embassy International celebrates the ambassadorship of excellent artists and their work that furthers intercultural understanding and peace through the universal language of the arts.
Now in its 31st year, all Dancing Poetry Festival prize winners will receive cash prizes, a certificate suitable for framing, and an invitation to read their poem at the Dancing Poetry Festival online.
Three Grand Prizes will receive $100 each plus their poems will be costumed, danced, and filmed. Many smaller prizes.
See videos from past Dancing Poetry Festivals that show the vast diversity of poetry and dance we present each year. For poetry, we look for something new and different including new twists to old themes, different looks at common situations, and innovative concepts for dynamic, thought-provoking entertainment. Please do not feel constrained to submit a poem about dancing. The entry fee is just $5 for one poem and $10 for three. Limit of 38 lines per poem. We look forward to reading your submissions.
See the complete contest rules and enjoy "Different Diamonds" by Eileen Malone, winner of a Grand Prize in 2023.
Different Diamonds
Differences of opinions are scattered diamonds
multi-faceted, brilliantly cut, each facet of
which reflects a new and different star-splashed
glitter of enlightening acceptance of the foreignin the cosmic nowhere found in the expanding
universe, a variety of opinions rushes like fresh
snow silvers a landscape, only to melt like ice
rising in a dazzle of storms from pools of waterexploration of other cultures, of other textures
jeweled toads of polished mica, quartz, malachite
multitude points of view that geometrically form
and reform when interspersed between enchanted
and cursed, between myth and memoryilluminating unknown ideas, patterns of discovery
of belonging, providing a bejeweled end to loneliness
diamond bright, independent of space and time, yet
still part of it, connected to the greater whole.
