Fundraising Raffle for Nina Riggs Poetry Award
As previously announced, Cave Wall is fundraising to establish the Nina Riggs Poetry Award. They are sooooo close to their target amount and are now offering a sweet GIANT RAFFLE to help them reach their goal.
Check out the HUGE list of prizes here. Everyone who donates any amount will be entered in the raffle. A win no matter what!
In discussing the award with me, Cave Wall Editor Rhett Trull offered this beautiful reminiscence:
When Nina got pregnant, she was told by a poetry colleague, “Oh no, here come the motherhood poems.” Years later, when I got pregnant, a different colleague told me, “Whatever you do, just don’t start writing motherhood poems.” We knew they were teasing, but it bothered us. And of course, we ignored it and wrote whatever we wanted to write, whatever we were moved to write. Because that’s what we do as poets, all of us: we write toward the heart. I used to hear, all the time, “Don’t write poems about grandmothers and dead pets.” Well, that’s ridiculous. You can write about ANYTHING. Just write it well, write beyond subject and self, toward the greater truths to which all subjects lead us if we let them. At Cave Wall, we’ve published some beautiful poems about grandmothers and dead pets, once in the same poem and wow, is it a knockout. Anyway, Nina believed all subjects worthy of poetry. And I hope with this award, we can encourage and celebrate writing that mines the everyday for its beauty and truth, as well as writing about relationships and family and, yes, motherhood, too. All of it. All the small and big and wondrous things that connect us, that shine a light on the ordinary revealing that everything is extraordinary if we take a moment to see it.
