First Book-age

I've been reading The Gift: Creativity and the Artist in the Modern World, by Lewis Hyde. I'm not ready to opine on the book just yet, but if there's one thing I've learned it is that a gift carries value only for as long as it is moving onward through the community. If your response to a gift is to take it out of circulation--picture the English colonial shipping off the Iroquois peace pipe, to be kept under glass in some faraway museum--you're not doing anyone any good.

What follows is a list of awards and fellowships for which one is particularly or exclusively eligible having published a first book of poetry. Note that you'll have to check individual website to confirm how the deadline relates to your publication date. This list builds upon something passed to me by Erika Meitner a couple of years back. Enjoy...

ForeWord Magazine Book Award
Deadline: January 15

Levis Reading Prize at Virginia Commonwealth University
Deadline: January 15

Eric Hoffer Award for Independent Books
Deadline: January 15

Balcones Poetry Prize
Deadline: January 31

Devil’s Kitchen Reading Awards
Deadline: February 1

Paterson Poetry Prize
Deadline: February 1

Library of Virginia Awards
Deadline: February 8

Bread Loaf Conference Fellowship
Deadline: March 20

Sewanee Writers Conference Fellowship
Deadline: May 1

National Book Awards
Deadline: June 16

Great Lakes College Association New Writers Award
Deadline: July 25

Kate Tufts Discovery Award
Deadline: September 15

Pulitzer Prize
Deadline: June 15 and October 15

Norma Farber First Book Award of the Poetry Society of America
Deadline: December 22

Deadlines and details of entry are subject to change and will not be updated on the blog; this is just a set of leads as of December 2008. Good luck!