Duluth Dylan Fest Announces a Call for Poetry

This past Monday the Duluth Dylan Fest committee convened to finalize the events for our 2021 festival. As with last year, it's bittersweet because of all the ongoing uncertainty surrounding Covid-19. Fortunately, the team has had a year to prepare instead of weeks, which was all we really had after the announcement of everything shutting down at this time.

Rather than go directly into the Call For Poetry, I thought I'd begin by giving a shout out to Hibbing for the years of Dylan Days they championed long before the Duluth efforts took off. This week I got in touch with Aaron Brown whose Minnesota Brown blog is one of the best blogs in the state. I had hoped to acquire one of the winning poems from Hibbing Days to share, but got something even better: some heartfelt reminiscing about Zimmy's and what Hibbing had been doing the weekend of Bob Dylan's birthday each year.

"The Hibbing Dylan Days celebration sought to do much more than just commemorate Hibbing's hometown son Bob Dylan," said Brown. "We tried to capture the creative spirit and storytelling that helped make Bob Dylan who he is. From our singer-songwriter contest to the literary contest and journal, we wanted to provide new artists with opportunities to express themselves.

"Unfortunately, the closure of Zimmy's Bar and Grill in Hibbing, coupled with the retirement of key members of our organization, led us to conclude that new leadership was needed. The Hibbing Dylan Project (more recently) formed to commemorate Dylan with a sculpture and arts project at Hibbing High School."

It was in the spirit of Hibbing's Dylan Days that Duluth Dylan Fest (DDF) patterned its own weeklong variation. Once the singer-songwriter contest was no more, the DDF experimented with various venues for a couple years until finding the perfect location at Sacred Heart in the Hillside. 

A couple of committee members were also part of the Duluth poetry circles, which made it relatively easy to incorporate a poetry event each year. With Dylan being a visual artist--painting a sculpture--another event was added to the week. Music, however, has been a dominant theme throughout all the years of the weeklong festival. 

This blog post is to announce our Call For Poetry. Special thanks to author and poet Phil Fitzpatrick for crafting the details for this original event. Phil was winner of the Dylan Days poetry contest in Hibbing with his poem "Guns." It was Aaron Brown who ran the Hibbing poetry contests, the last being in 2014.

Announcing a CALL FOR POETRY.

Deadline: May 1, 2021!

The Duluth Dylan Fest Planning Committee announces a poetry contest to celebrate Bob Dylan’s 80^th birthday (May 24, 2021). All entries must use one of two titles: “Miles from Home” or “Changing Course.” Two grand prize winners will be selected, one for each title, and the two best runner-up poems for each title will also be chosen. The point of the contest is to celebrate Dylan’s life, music, writing, artistry – in short, some aspect of Bob Dylan’s 80 years – using one of these two overarching phrases as the title of your poem.

Two grand prize winners will each receive $200 and be the featured poems at a poetry reading during the week of the Duluth Dylan Fest. The two runner-up poems for each of the two titles will receive $50 and will also be read at the poetry event as well. Two or three additional contestants may be invited to read their poems at the reading and will receive gift certificates.                                                                                                        

Poems must be in doc or docx format.                                                                                        
Poems must be in regular 12-pt Times New Roman font.                                                      
Poems must be double-spaced and fit on one 8.5 x 11 page.

Personal identification must not appear anywhere in the manuscript.

.                           

Poems must be submitted between March 1, 2021 and May 1, 2021.                    

A $15 reading fee must accompany each poem. Multiple poems may be entered, but each poem must be submitted separately and accompanied by the $15 entry fee.

Poems and entry fee must be postmarked and mailed not later than May 1, 2021 to:

Dylan Poetry Contest

c/o Fitzpatrick

1609 E 6^th St.

Duluth, MN 55812

Make checks payable to: Duluth Dylan Fest

Poems may also be submitted at fitztrick@gmail.com and the $15 fee paid with PayPal @ duluthdylanfest  or  paypal.me/duluthdylanfest

Winners will be notified and posted on the DDF Facebook page by May 15, 2021.

* * * 

"You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows."