Wildling Museum of Art and Nature sponsors Earth Day poetry competition
The Wildling Museum of Art and Nature is holding an Earth Day Poetry competition for writers of all ages.
“Climate Change: Our Impact” is the theme for the second annual Earth Day poetry competition sponsored by the Wildling Museum of Art and Nature in Solvang.
Santa Barbara County writers of all ages are invited to use poetry to interpret the effects of climate change with separate judging categories for youth (ages 17 and younger) and adult writing submissions.
The competition is intended to honor Earth Day while highlighting the importance of standing up to protect the planet’s dwindling natural resources and working against the threats of climate change.
The deadline to submit work is at 5 p.m. March 21.
Competition entrants must live in Santa Barbara County. No more than three works may be submitted per person. Complete poetry competition guidelines, prize details and entry forms are available at www.wildlingmuseum.org/news/2022-earth-day-poetry-competition.
Entries will be judged by poets Sojourner Kincaid Rolle and Chryss Yost.
“We live in a time of wild, wild weather — uncontrollable and unpredictable but with great intentionality, perhaps preventable,” said Ms. Rolle, a community activist who served as Poet Laureate of Santa Barbara from 2015 to 2017 and as one of the Poets Laureate-in-Residence at the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History during its 2016 Centennial.
The museum published “Moving Forward, Looking Back: Poems Celebrating Nature” as a part of that group residency.
In 2017, Ms. Rolle was profiled in artist Holli Harmon’s “Portraits of the Central Coast.”
Ms. Rolle’s poems appear in “While We Wait” (2021), “Rare Feathers” (2015) and “What Breathes Us: Santa Barbara Poets Laureate” (2005 to 2015).
Her environmental activism includes work with Agua Pura, Sierra Club, Community Environmental Council and the Santa Barbara Creeks Division.
Ms. Yost is co-editor of Gunpowder Press and served as Santa Barbara Poet Laureate from 2013 to 2015. Her poems have been included in the most popular poetry textbooks in the country and widely anthologized elsewhere. Poems have appeared in Askew, The Hudson Review, Quarterly West and Solo as well as other national and international publications.
“Santa Barbara County inspires all varieties of art including poetry. There is an abundance of natural beauty here as well as an awareness of what’s at risk from climate change,” said Ms. Yost. “The disastrous 1969 oil spill in the Santa Barbara Channel helped inspire the first Earth Day.
“Fires have become more frequent and have scarred our mountains. We can see what is at risk. We feel it. All this love and fear and fragility is reflected in our art.”
Adult poetry entrants will have the opportunity to win first prize ($200), second prize ($100) and third prize (a family membership to Wildling Museum).
First prize for youth entrants is $100, second is $50 and third is family membership to the Wildling Museum.
The competition will culminate at the annual Santa Barbara Earth Day celebration hosted by the Community Environmental Council on April 23 at the Arlington Theatre.
The top three winning poems in both the adult and youth categories will be selected ahead of Earth Day, and the winners will read them at the Santa Barbara Earth Day celebration. Top winners will also be featured on the Wildling Museum website in the spring.
email: mmcmahon@newspress.com
FYI
For more information on the Earth Day Poetry competition at the Wildling Museum of Art and Nature, call 805-686-8315 or email info@wildlingmuseum.org.
