2010 Festival

The poetry competition organized as part of this year's festival received over 500 poems from 175 poets. The selection committee included Kathryn Stripling Byer, Greg Dawes, Joseph Donahue, Jaki Shelton Green, and Hatice Örün Öztürk.

 Winners

The following ten poets were selected as the winners of this year’s competition (In alphabetical order):

Kamal Ayyildiz New York, NY	Melvin Kenne Istanbul, Turkey	C.P. Mangel Chapel Hill, NC	George E. McKim Raleigh, NC	Scott Rudd Rochester, NY
Anya B. Russian Greensboro, NC	Garrison M. Somers Chapel Hill, NC	Celisa Steele Carrboro, NC	Carolyn Beard Whitlow Greensboro, NC	Loftin Wilson Carrboro, NC

Keynote Address

Mutlu Konuk Blasing is professor of English Department at Brown University.

Blasing works on American poetry, poetic theory, and translation. She has translated  Nâzım Hikmet’s work and has published eight books of translations. The latest are  Nâzım Hikmet: Human Landscapes from My Country and Poems of Nâzım Hikmet.

 Poetry Spotlight

The festival guests had the joy of listening to poems read by Jeffery Beam, Joe Donahue and Jaki Shelton Green