Poetry Out Loud

April is National Poetry Month. No wonder you're feeling the need for a quick fix of the best poetry currently being written in North Carolina. You can now scratch that itch on the NC State Poetry Contest Winners website from the NCSU Libraries .

Sponsored by the Creative Writing Program in the English Department at NC State University, the contest received nearly 500 submissions this year from every corner of the state and from over twenty college writing programs. The poems were judged by noted poet Thomas Lux, holder of the Bourne chair in poetry at the Georgia Institute of Technology, former Guggenheim fellow, and winner of multiple grants from the National Endowment for the Arts.

The NCSU Libraries site (http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/events/poetry ) provides audio files of the five winners reading the following poems:

  • Winner of the 2011 Poetry Prize:

"Where Touching Leads Us," by Brian Ownbey

  • Honorable Mentions

"Visiting Tenakee Springs, AK," by Sierra Golden

"Band of Aides," by Rob Greene

  • Winner of the 2011 Undergraduate Poetry Prize

"Wallet-Size Photo of the Child I Gave Up," by Kat Reece

  • The American Academy of Poets Prize (for graduate students)

"Hollow," by Kari Smith