Famous Poets Society

Last updated

The Famous Poets Society (also known as the Christian Poets Guild [1] ) was a vanity press [2] [3] that organized a poetry contest and offered self-publishing services.

Despite the company's claims to have awarded over $425,000 in cash prizes to selected poets over 8 years, [4] nearly all writers who submitted works were accepted regardless of artistic merit, and they were required to buy the anthology (described in one NBC4 story as resembling a "yearbook" and being printed on "Xerox paper" [5] ) in which they appeared in order to receive a copy of it; in addition, they had to pay significant fees to attend the contests' award ceremonies. [6] [7] The Winning Writers website lists the Famous Poets Society as service that aspiring poets should avoid, [1] while an article in the Boston Phoenix described it as an outright scam, stating that its presumptive founder "[had] been preying on the naïveté and vanity of poets for 20 years." [7]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Derek Walcott</span> Saint Lucian poet and playwright (1930–2017)

Sir Derek Alton Walcott OM was a Saint Lucian poet and playwright. He received the 1992 Nobel Prize in Literature. His works include the Homeric epic poem Omeros (1990), which many critics view "as Walcott's major achievement." In addition to winning the Nobel Prize, Walcott received many literary awards over the course of his career, including an Obie Award in 1971 for his play Dream on Monkey Mountain, a MacArthur Foundation "genius" award, a Royal Society of Literature Award, the Queen's Medal for Poetry, the inaugural OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature, the 2010 T. S. Eliot Prize for his book of poetry White Egrets and the Griffin Trust For Excellence in Poetry Lifetime Recognition Award in 2015.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Seamus Heaney</span> Irish writer and translator (1939–2013)

Seamus Justin Heaney was an Irish poet, playwright and translator. He received the 1995 Nobel Prize in Literature. Among his best-known works is Death of a Naturalist (1966), his first major published volume. American poet Robert Lowell described him as "the most important Irish poet since Yeats", and many others, including the academic John Sutherland, have said that he was "the greatest poet of our age". Robert Pinsky has stated that "with his wonderful gift of eye and ear Heaney has the gift of the story-teller." Upon his death in 2013, The Independent described him as "probably the best-known poet in the world".

A vanity press or vanity publisher, sometimes also subsidy publisher, is a publishing house where the author pays to have the book published, and signs a restrictive contract which involves surrendering significant rights. It is not to be confused with hybrid publishing, where the publisher and author collaborate and share costs and risks, or with assisted self-publishing, where the author pays publishing services to assist with self-publishing his own book, and retains all rights.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rita Dove</span> American poet and author (born 1952)

Rita Frances Dove is an American poet and essayist. From 1993 to 1995, she served as Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress. She is the first African American to have been appointed since the position was created by an act of Congress in 1986 from the previous "consultant in poetry" position (1937–86). Dove also received an appointment as "special consultant in poetry" for the Library of Congress's bicentennial year from 1999 to 2000. Dove is the second African American to receive the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, in 1987, and she served as the Poet Laureate of Virginia from 2004 to 2006. Since 1989, she has been teaching at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, where she held the chair of Commonwealth Professor of English from 1993 to 2020; as of 2020, she holds the chair of Henry Hoyns Professor of Creative Writing.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dana Gioia</span> American poet and writer

Michael Dana Gioia is an American poet, literary critic, literary translator, and essayist.

Alice Fulton is an American author of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction. Fulton is the Ann S. Bowers Professor of English Emerita at Cornell University. Her awards include the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature, National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, Library of Congress Rebekah Johnson Bobbitt National Award, the MacArthur Fellowship, an Ingram Merrill Foundation Award, as well as a Guggenheim Fellowship.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sharon Olds</span> American poet

Sharon Olds is an American poet. Olds won the first San Francisco Poetry Center Award in 1980, the 1984 National Book Critics Circle Award, and the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. She teaches creative writing at New York University and is a previous director of the Creative Writing Program at NYU.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mary Oliver</span> American poet (1935–2019)

Mary Jane Oliver was an American poet who won the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize. She found inspiration for her work in nature and had a lifelong habit of solitary walks in the wild. Her poetry is characterized by a sincere wonderment and profound connection with the environment, conveyed in unadorned language and simple yet striking imagery. In 2007, she was declared to be the country's best-selling poet.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jorie Graham</span> American poet (born 1950)

Jorie Graham is an American poet. The Poetry Foundation called Graham "one of the most celebrated poets of the American post-war generation." She replaced poet Seamus Heaney as Boylston Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory at Harvard, becoming the first woman to be appointed to this position. She won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry (1996) for The Dream of the Unified Field: Selected Poems 1974-1994 and was chancellor of the Academy of American Poets from 1997 to 2003. She won the 2013 International Nonino Prize in Italy.

The University of Georgia Press or UGA Press is the university press of the University of Georgia, a public land-grant research university with its main campus in Athens, Georgia. It is the oldest and largest publishing house in Georgia and a member of the Association of University Presses.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mark Doty</span> American poet and memoirist (born 1953)

Mark Doty is an American poet and memoirist best known for his work My Alexandria. He was the winner of the National Book Award for Poetry in 2008.

Poetry.com is a domain name that has historically been used for poetry-sharing in various forms.

The Poetry Society of America is a literary organization founded in 1910 by poets, editors, and artists. It is the oldest poetry organization in the United States. Past members of the society have included such renowned poets as Witter Bynner, Robert Frost, Langston Hughes, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Marianne Moore, and Wallace Stevens.

Michael Symmons Roberts FRSL is a British poet.

<i>Boston Review</i> American magazine

Boston Review is an American quarterly political and literary magazine. It publishes political, social, and historical analysis, literary and cultural criticism, book reviews, fiction, and poetry, both online and in print. Its signature form is a "forum", featuring a lead essay and several responses. Boston Review also publishes an imprint of books with MIT Press.

AGNI is an American literary magazine founded in 1972 that publishes poetry, fiction, essays, reviews, interviews, and artwork twice a year in print and weekly online from its home at Boston University. Its coeditors are Sven Birkerts and William Pierce.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kamala Surayya</span> Indian poet and author (1934–2009)

Kamala Surayya , popularly known by her one-time pen name Madhavikutty and married name Kamala Das, was an Indian poet in English as well as an author in Malayalam from Kerala, India .Her fame in Kerala primarily stems from her short stories and autobiography, My Story, whereas her body of work in English, penned under the pseudonym Kamala Das, is renowned for its poems and candid autobiography. She was also a widely read columnist and wrote on diverse topics including women's issues, child care, politics, etc. Her liberal treatment of female sexuality, marked her as an iconoclast in popular culture of her generation. On 31 May 2009, aged 75, she died at Jehangir Hospital in Pune.

Alan Richard Shapiro is an American poet and professor of English and creative writing at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

Rusty Morrison is an American poet and publisher. She received a BA in English from Mills College in Oakland, California, an MFA in Creative Writing (Poetry) from Saint Mary's College of California in Moraga, California, and an MA in Education from California State University, San Francisco. She has taught in the MFA program at the University of San Francisco and was Poet in Residence at Saint Mary’s College in 2009. She has also served as a visiting poet at a number of colleges and universities, including the University of Redlands, the University of Arizona, Boise State University, Marylhurst University, and Millikin University. In 2001, Morrison and her husband, Ken Keegan, founded Omnidawn Publishing in Richmond, California, and continue to work as co-publishers. She contracted Hepatitis C in her twenties but, like most people diagnosed with this disease, did not experience symptoms for several years. Since then, a focus on issues relating to disability has developed as an area of interest in her writing.

A vanity award is an award in which the recipient purchases the award and/or marketing services to give the false appearance of a legitimate honor. Pitches for Who's Who-type publications, biographies or nominations for awards or special memberships can have a catch to them in which the honoree is required to pay for recognition.

References

  1. 1 2 "Contests and Services to Avoid". Winning Writers. Retrieved May 30, 2022.
  2. Rivenburg, Roy (November 24, 2002). "There Once Was a Poet from L.A." Los Angeles Times .
  3. "Acquisitions Procedures: Print on Demand". American University Library. Washington, D.C.: American University . Retrieved May 30, 2022.
  4. "FPS Convention Winners". Archived from the original on October 27, 2012. Retrieved September 20, 2012.
  5. Crenshaw, Liz (February 25, 1999). "Poetry Contest". Archived from the original on February 23, 2007. Retrieved September 5, 2022.
  6. Silverstein, Jake (August 2002). "What Is Poetry?". Harper's Magazine . Retrieved May 30, 2022. It was felt that poetry was needed now more than ever. It was also felt that there would be no full refunds of the $495 registration fee, in the event of a canceled flight or a distraught flier.
  7. 1 2 Wright, Chris (July 5, 2001). "BAD ART: A verse-case scenario". Boston Phoenix . Retrieved May 30, 2022.