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Poetry Contest Deadline
September 22 @ 8:00 am - 5:00 pm
Church of the Good Shepherd Launches “The Rhythm of Life” Poetry Contest
The Church of the Good Shepherd is excited to announce the launching of their first ever poetry contest to wrap up their creative summer series, Food for Body and Soul! We invite members of our community, as well as the poetry world at large, writers of any or no religious affiliation, to participate.
Contest Information
This year’s theme, “The Rhythm of Life”, evokes thoughts of the natural world as well as the spiritual, and provides rich opportunities to reflect on what it is to be human and to be alive.
Submission Information
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Each entrant may submit up to three (3) poems.
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Please submit a single document in a single email to poetry@goodshepherdnorfolk.org
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Attach poems to the email as a .doc, .docx or .pdf attachment with your name in the subject line, but not in the attachment. In the body of the email, list poem title(s).
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All submissions will be read anonymously. Please remove your name and contact information from your document and file name. File name should instead give title of first poem in submission (for example: TheWind.docx.)
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Contest is open to poets 16 and up. A separate contest is available for those under 16.
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We welcome all forms and styles but do not accept previously published work or work that has been created in any part with the assistance of AI tools.
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We do accept simultaneous submissions. Please notify us promptly if your work is accepted elsewhere.
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While the poetry contest is not an explicitly religious event, the guidelines used derive from a fundamental commitment our members make, using words from our Book of Common Prayer: “Will you strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being?” We answer, “I will, with God’s help.” We will not consider submissions that endorse prejudice, racism, xenophobia, classism, sexism, homophobia or gratuitous violence.
Deadline
Poems must be received by September 22, 2025
All contest winners and honorable mentions will be announced by November 1, 2025.
Entry fees
There is no entry fee.
Prizes and Judges
All entries will be judged by Angier Brock, Emily Pease, and Beth Williams, poets who, as part of the 2025 Food for Body and Soul series, led our poetry collaboration in June.
Winners and entrants may be invited to a public reading.
1st prize: $250
2nd prize: $100
3rd prize: $50
Depending upon submission response, Church of the Good Shepherd may choose to publish a small anthology of winning and notable poems. Good Shepherd requests first serial rights. All rights revert back to the author upon publication, although we will preserve your work online in our archives. We also request the right to republish your work in future anthologies and/or as promotional broadsides with author permission.
Selection Committee Bios:
Angier Brock retired from more than thirty years of teaching, Angier lives in Yorktown, VA. Over two dozen of her hymn and anthem texts, set to music by various British and American composers, have been sung at worship services and concerts in the US and the UK. Several have been recorded and are available on Spotify. She also writes reflective prose and offers small, private writing classes. She has been a keynote speaker at the Tri-Diocesan Fall Camp at Shrine Mont on the topic of the connections between spirituality and writing. She holds an MA in Christian Education from Union Presbyterian Seminary and an M.F.A. in Creative Writing (Poetry) from Virginia Commonwealth University.
Emily Pease is a fiction writer and poet. Her short stories have been published in The Missouri Review (Editor’s Prize, 1999), The Georgia Review, Witness, The Alaska Quarterly Review, Shenandoah (Bevel Summers Prize), Kenyon Review online, and elsewhere. Her collection, Let Me Out Here, won the C. Michael Curtis Short Story Book Prize at Hub City Press in 2018, judged by Lee K. Abbott. Her poetry appears in One, Florida Review, Rattle (Ekphrastic Challenge winner, June, 2021), Litmosphere, and Juniper. Her poem, “Lone Pony On the Last Farm In the City” was recently chosen as the winner of the William Matthews Poetry Prize at Asheville Poetry Review, selected by Nickole Brown. She earned an MFA in Fiction from the Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers and taught creative writing for many years at William & Mary. She continues to call Williamsburg home.
Beth Oast Williams is the author of the chapbook Riding Horses in the Harbor (Finishing Line Press, 2020). Her poetry has been accepted for publication in Nimrod, Salamander, EcoTheo Review, Leon Literary Review, SWWIM, One Art, and Rattle’s Poets Respond, among others, and nominated twice for the Pushcart Prize.