HEART Poetry Award
Deadline: June 30, 2024
Nostalgia Press, going strong since 1986, will award $500 and publication in HEART 19 (Fall/Winter 2024). Honorable Mentions also published. Winners going back to our first contest in 1988 are recognized on our website.
- Judge: Elizabeth Thomas
- $10 entry fee covers 3 poems
- All contestants will receive the Fall/Winter 2024 issue of HEART
- Submit prose poems and modern free verse that are insightful, immersing, poignant, and reflective
- Submit unpublished work only
- On each page, please include your name, address, phone number, and email address (this information will be hidden so your work can be judged blind)
- Winners will be announced on the Nostalgia Press website
- Submissions will not be returned
Submit online or mail your entry to:
Nostalgia Press
Attn: HEART Poetry Award
115 Randazzo Drive
Elloree, SC 29047
Please enjoy this poem by this year's judge:
SOUND VIEW, AUGUST 1965
We turn down the last road
leading to the beach
and like a magician
my father snaps his fingers
and the ocean appears,
a glittery vision.
We all applaud,
even my mother
who hates the water,
but wants desperately
to get out of the steaming station wagon.
The salty scent of sea
tangles with anticipation
of lemon ice
purchased on our way to the sand,
our fingers sticky
before we even drop towels
and splash into the surf.
Our mother is left
to lay out the blanket
still gritty from last weekend,
sort peanut butter sandwiches from
bologna,
adjust the umbrella she will sit beneath
while hiding her "True Romance"
inside the cover of "Life".
As children
we want nothing more than a carousel
horse
to ride into the sunset.
The only clouds in this day
are beyond the horizon,
our life laid out before us,
vast and sparkling
like the sea.
