The Carolina Quarterly

In honor of National Poetry Month, The Carolina Quarterly launched a contest to display the poetic talents in Orange County, North Carolina on all Chapel Hill Transit buses. To do so, we ran a poetry contest open to all students at UNC-Chapel Hill and residents of Orange County. We received a number of wonderful submissions and left the unenviable task of selecting the winners to contest judge Rachel Richardson

The winners are as follows:

$50 Grand Prize Winner:
Lauren Moore – “Dull Metal”

Honorable Mentions:
Caleb Agnew – “Time Travel”
Emily Cameron – “Spring Haiku”
Jessica Martell – “Gerard Manly Hopkins Goes Grocery Shopping”
Karina McCorkle – “Double Ear Infection”

Each Chapel Hill Transit bus will feature two poems throughout the month of April. Lauren’s poem will appear on all 98 CHT buses, while the Honorable Mentions will be randomly distributed amongst the buses. The posters go out on MONDAY APRIL 1, so keep an eye out for them.

Thanks to everyone who submitted poems, and to Rachel Richardson for judging. Immense thanks to Assistant Editors Bhumi Dalia and Heather Van Wallendael for publicizing and successfully implementing the contest. Thanks also to Assistant Transit Director Brian Litchfield of Chapel Hill Transit for helping us to get poetry onto the buses.

You can take a look at the posters here:

In honor of National Poetry Month, the Carolina Quarterly is launching a campaign to recognize the poetic talents of Orange County, North Carolina.

Send us your most creative ballads, haikus, sestinas, sonnets, villanelles, ghazals, prose poems, or free verse compositions by 11:59pm on March 15th for consideration. Poems must be no longer than 30 lines. 4 poems per person, maximum.

The best pieces will be featured on Chapel Hill Transit buses throughout the month of April. One grand prize winner will receive $50. The winner and all honorable mentions will get a copy of their bus poster and a one-year subscription to the Carolina Quarterly.

[read more of last year's winning poems here]

To enter, please email your poems as a single attachment to carolina.quarterly@gmail.com. Please write “Bards on the Bus” in the subject line.

The contest is free and open to all students and affiliates of UNC-Chapel Hill and residents of Orange County, North Carolina.

Contest judge: Rachel Richardson

Rachel Richardson’s first book, Copperhead, was published by Carnegie Mellon University Press in 2011. She is a 2013-14 National Endowment for the Arts fellow, a recent Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University, and currently serves as the Kenan Visiting Writer at UNC Chapel Hill. Her poems and nonfiction appear in Slate, New England Review, Kenyon Review, and elsewhere.

As it turns out, our 2012 Pushcart-nominated poets are not only talented—they’re consistent.  With that in mind, we’ve twisted their arms for some as-yet-unseen B-sides from their remarkably deep catalogues. Just in time for the holidays, we submit them now for your reading pleasure.

“Temp Orientation” by Ben Purkert

“Breath Mint, Soft Drink” by Dan Piepenbring

“Exhibition in the Museum of Days” by Craig Beaven