In September, Poetry Society of Tennessee (PST) announced a new poetry contest for college students of all levels enrolled in a college or university located in Tennessee: the Tennessee Collegiate Poetry Contest. Poets were invited to enter one original, unpublished poem. Today, we are pleased to announced the winners of this contest:
- 1st Place: “Still” by by Tate Haugen, Tusculum, Greeneville
- 2nd Place: “East TN Autumn” by Kelsey Ann Guy, East Tennessee State University (ETSU), Johnson City
- 3rd Place: “Thistle’s Crime” by Kiersten Paxton, Tusculum, Greeneville
- Honorable Mentions
- “Citico” by Major Joshua Frerich II , Tennessee Wesleyan University, Athens
- “Chipped Front Tooth” by Erika Perez Cortazar, ETSU, Johnson City
Winners receive $100 for 1st prize, $50 for 2nd, and $25 for third and their poems will be published in Tennessee Voices Anthology, 2024-2025. PST is grateful to Northeast Tennessee Regional Representative Fred Tudiver, whose donation funded prizes for this contest.
Many thanks to our readers Jake Lawson and Fred Tudiver, to entry coordinator Sean Kyte, and to our esteemed contest judge, Linda Parsons.
Standout Poems
Judge Linda Parsons had the following comments about the winning poems and honorable mentions:
- “Still” stands tall among the rest with its many surprises and mastery of craft. The conceit of stillness takes several shapes and turns and holds the reader to the end. I also admire the forbidding edges in this poem. These edges attract rather than repel, a fine balance.
- “East TN Autumn” contains surprising language and imagery while being full of inventive contradictions (sweet autumn/her chaos). A beautifully longing homage to fall in Tennessee without a note of sentimentality.
- “Thistle’s Crime” is a masterful use of rhyme and language in the Romantic tradition, with the well-constructed metaphor of thorns/vulnerability. The musicality here is wonderful!
- I love the specific details and narratives in the honorable mentions, both fine and humorous meditations on change.
About Linda Parsons
A poet, playwright, essayist, and editor, Linda Parsons is the poetry editor for Madville Publishing and the copy editor for Chapter 16, the literary website of Humanities Tennessee. She is published in such journals as The Georgia Review, Iowa Review, Prairie Schooner, Southern Poetry Review, Terrain, The Chattahoochee Review, Shenandoah, and many others. Her sixth collection is Valediction: Poems and Prose. Five of her plays have been produced by Flying Anvil Theatre in Knoxville, Tennessee. She is an eighth-generation Tennessean.
About Tate Haugen
Tate Haugen is a Wisconsin born writer who moved to Appalachia for college. His free time is spent exploring nature and what it means to be a hunter. He is an avid outdoorsman which his writing shows.
About Kelsey Ann Guy
Kelsey Ann Guy is a junior at East Tennessee State University studying Media & Communications with minors in Creative Writing, Fine & Performing Arts, and French. She is a scholar of the Honors College at ETSU for poetry. She hopes to pursue a career in public relations and continue creative writing after graduation.
About Kiersten Paxton
Kiersten Paxton Kiersten Paxton was born and raised in Bristol, TN and is currently an English major at Tusculum University. She’s worked as the Assistant Fiction Editor for the international journal The Tusculum Review. Her poem “Take Longer” was published in Tennessee Voices Anthology, 2022-2023. In 2023, she won the Curtis Owens Literary awards for Fiction, Nonfiction, and Drama. She enjoys music, books, and experimenting with different writing styles and genres. She’d like to become a full-time writer after her graduation.
About Major Frerichs
Major Frerichs is a creative writing student in the BFA English program at Tennessee Wesleyan University. He lives in Vonore, Tennessee.
About Erika Perez Cortazar
Erika Perez Cortazar is a graduate student at East Tennessee State University. She is currently serving as one of the executive editors of the 52nd edition of the student literary magazine, The Mockingbird.
Poetry Society of Tennessee 