On April 13, 2024, attendees from across Tennessee and beyond came together on Zoom for PST’s 67th Annual Poetry Festival. Attendees explored writing perspectives in a workshop. Following the workshop, PST announced contest results and poets read winning poems that will be published in PST’s forthcoming Tennessee Voices Anthology, 2023-2024.

Workshop

Following opening remarks by Festival Coordinator Howard Carman and President Lisa Kamolnick, workshop leader and guest judge William G. Wright gave a candid talk about the challenges of writing poetry as he discussed invoking the senses, embracing Socratic ignorance to power your poetry and how to use perspective to improve poetic revisions. He also offered a method he uses to create and submit poetry through the year and provided members a prompt for later use. Members will be sent a replay link in an upcoming meeting notice.

Contest Winners

Following a brief intermission, Deborah Adams announced festival contest results, and a group of poets read poems selected for inclusion in Tennessee Voices, 2023-2024. Howard Carman announced the Best of Fest winner along with monthly and student contest results. First place poems from festival, member, and student contests along with Tennessee Voices contest finalists will be published in the anthology. See a full list of festival contest winners here, monthly contests winners here, and student contest winners here.

Best of Fest Goes to ….

Best of the Fest is an award presented to the top poem among winning festival poems. Workshop presenter William G. Wright, the guest judge for this special award, selected the Best of Fest winner. Danita Dodson won Best of Fest for her poem “Bits and Pieces.” Look for “Bits and Pieces” and other winning poems in Tennessee Voices Anthology, 2023-2024 this summer.