EAC Prize for Poetry Reception

A book launch, reading, and celebration for the Eastport Arts Center’s Charles Moore Prize for Poetry will be held on Saturday, August 24, 6-8 pm, downstairs at the EAC. The event will include readings by Washington County poets who submitted poems to the contest, a formal announcement of the winners in both adult and youth categories, and light refreshments.

The published anthology, Connecting Nature, which includes all qualified submissions to the 2024 contest, will be available for purchase at the event.

Each year, two Maine poets are invited to judge the contest. This year’s judges are, for the youth division, Molly McDonald, an Eastport poet and member of the English faculty at Washington County Community College, and for the adult division, Jeri Theriault of Waterville, a poet and collage artist whose most recent book of poetry is Self-Portrait as Homestead (Deerbrook Editions). For ultimate fairness in the judging, the poems are sent to the judges with submitters’ names and other identifying information removed, ensuring a completely anonymous process.

A collaboration between seasonal-resident-with-Eastport-roots Charles “Chick” Moore and the EAC, the Charles Moore Poetry Prize was created in 2023 to bring people together through the power of poetry, to help strengthen bonds within our communities, and to provide an outlet to those poets who may lack an arena to share their creative output. In 2022, Moore retired after 50 years of practicing law in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and has been devoting time to undertaking new non-profit projects supporting community and creativity, including this contest.

At the celebration, a total of $900 in cash prizes, plus vouchers to EAC events, will be awarded to winners and honorable mentions in both categories. Over 70 poets submitted to this year’s competition, which had a theme of “the natural world and our connection to it.” The anthology, designed and composed by Sea Smoke Press of Eastport, features poetry and prose poems on a wide and deep variety of relationships between humans and nature.

Eastport Arts Center is at 36 Washington Street, Eastport, and at www.eastportartscenter.org, and is handicapped-accessible.