Undergraduate Admissions

High school students can show off their creative talents and abilities through Gannon University’s 33rd annual High School Poetry Contest, sponsored by Gannon University and the Erie County Poet Laureate Initiative.

The Gannon English department is accepting entries for separate poetry contests – one exclusively for Erie County students and one for all students outside Erie County. The deadline for all submissions is Feb. 1, 2010.

All students may enter up to three original poems of any topic (poems will not be returned), totaling no more than six pages. Poems must be typed and must include the student’s:

• Name, address, county of residence, and phone number.

• Grade level (noted in the top left corner of each poem).

• Name, address, and phone number of high school, along with teacher’s name (noted in the top right corner).

All entries should be mailed to:

Berwyn Moore, associate professor of English
Gannon University
109 University Square
Erie, PA 16541

Local students should include “Erie County High School Poetry Contest” on their entry. Students outside Erie County should include “Gannon University High School Poetry Contest.”

Winners of the contest will be announced at Gannon’s annual English Awards Night, to be held at 7:30 p.m. April 20, 2010, in the Yehl Room of the University’s Waldron Campus Center, 124 W. 7th St. Contest winners will receive $100 for first place, $75 for second place, and $50 for third place, as well as a signed book of poems from Billy Collins, the featured speaker for English Awards Night.

In September, Moore was named the first ever Poet Laureate for Erie County. As part of the award, she is receiving a $10,000 grant to fund a project allowing her to compile an anthology of poems and art by Erie County residents.

For more information on the Poetry Contest or on English Awards Night, contact Moore at 814-871-7504 or send e-mail to moore001@gannon.edu.

More about Billy Collins, the featured speaker for English Awards Night 2010

Collins is one of the world’s most popular and esteemed American poets, with works featured in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, and The American Scholar. His last three collections of poems have broken sales records for poetry.

Collins has published eight collections of poetry, including Questions About Angels, The Art of Drowning, Picnic, Lightning, Taking Off Emily Dickinson’s Clothes, Sailing Alone Around the Room: New & Selected Poems, Nine Horses, The Trouble With Poetry and Other Poems, and Ballistics.

He has received fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Guggenheim Foundation. Collins also has been awarded by Poetry magazine the Oscar Blumenthal Prize, the Bess Hokin Prize, the Frederick Bock Prize, and the Levinson Prize. In October, 2004, Collins was selected as the inaugural recipient of the Poetry Foundation’s Mark Twain Prize for Humor in Poetry.

In 2001, Collins was appointed United States Poet Laureate, and in January, 2004, he was named New York State Poet Laureate. Collins is currently an English professor at Lehman College of the City University of New York.