Campus Announcements

A $100 prize is endowed by Reed College in honor of Mary Barnard ’32 for the best poem or group of poems submitted by a Reed undergraduate. The contest is open to all disciplines; to ALL Reed undergraduates who are enrolled as of the contest due date. There are no restrictions regarding theme or style.

Submission Guidelines:

Two typed poems maximum, with your name, phone number, year in school, age, mailing address, Reed and non-Reed email address on each page.

SUBMIT: one electronic copy to Jolie Griffin (griffinjo@reed.edu, Vollum 320), by noon on April 2, 2021 

An established poet selected each year judges the Mary Barnard Academy of American Poets Prize Contest at Reed College. This year’s judge is Jeanne Heuving. Heuving teaches at the University of Washington, Seattle, where she is a professor in the graduate program in English, and she was the founder and first director of the MFA in Creative Writing and Poetics in the School of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences at the University of Washington, Bothell. Her poetry books include Incapacity; Transducer; and—most recently, in 2019—Mood Indigo. She has also written about the poetry of Nathaniel Mackey and Marianne Moore, among others.

Mary Barnard (1909-2001), a Reed graduate (class of 1932), was a renowned poet and writer and a translator of classical literature, including the following fragment from Sappho:

"Although they are
only breath, words
which I command
are immortal."

Details on the Academy of American Poets.