The Immediate Past Kansas Poet Laureate Will Be Our Guest Contest Judge

Songs of Eretz Poetry Review is pleased to announce that the immediate past Kansas Poet Laureate Eric McHenry (pictured) will be the Guest Judge for the Fourth Annual Songs of Eretz Poetry Award Contest.  The contest is open NOW for early submissions but will officially run from September 1 to October 15, 2017.  The winner will be awarded a one thousand dollar honorarium and will be announced in early 2018.  The contest guidelines may be found here http://www.songsoferetz.com/p/songs-of-eretz.html.  As a run-up to the official contest opening, one of McHenry's poems will be featured in Songs of Eretz Poetry Review every day beginning tomorrow, August 16.  As a special treat, a Guest Artist, J. Artemus Gordon, will provide original illustrations to accompany each poem--see below for more information about the artist.  

McHenry was the Poet Laureate of Kansas from May 2015 through May 2017 and teaches English at Washburn University in Topeka. Waywiser Press published McHenry’s newest book of poems, Odd Evening, in 2016. His previous collections include Potscrubber Lullabies, which won the Kate Tufts Discovery Award in 2007, and Mommy Daddy Evan Sage, a children’s book illustrated by Nicholas Garland. He also edited and introduced Peggy of the Flint Hills, a memoir by Zula Bennington Greene.

McHenry’s poems have appeared in: The New Republic, Yale Review, Cincinnati Review, Field, Poetry International, Gulf Coast, Poetry Daily, and Poetry Northwest from whom he received the 2010 Theodore Roethke Prize. His poetry criticism has appeared in The New York Times Book Review, Slate, and other publications.

McHenry lives in Lawrence, Kansas with his wife and two children. For information about his books, visit https://waywiser-press.com/eric-mchenry/.  


Our Guest Artist J. Artemus Gordon received his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the Columbus College of Art & Design in Columbus, Ohio where he honed his skills as a portrait and landscape painter, illustrator, sculptor, and jewelry maker.  He currently resides in Kansas.  Gordon invites you to connect with him on LinkedIn and Facebook and to explore his website JasonArtGo.com.

Portraits are one of Gordon's specialties--one of the things for which he is known is his uncanny ability to capture a likeness.  Two examples may be found here in this post:  Gordon's portrait of McHenry is composed of ink and watercolor on paper;  his self-portrait is watercolor on paper.