The Heartland Review Press
2021 Chapbook Contest
Grand Prize
$750 award and 25 copies
Submit and no more than 32 pages of original poetry in one Word document. Include a cover page with personal and contact information and a list where poems were previously published if needed.
We are not looking for the most publications, but the best short collection of poems. No identifying information should appear on any page other than the cover page.
A $30 donation to The Heartland Review Creative Writing Club is required to enter the contest. To donate, use Paypal at or send check or money order to:
Chapbook Contest
c/o Sandi Howard
ECTC
600 College Street Road
Elizabethtown, KY 42701
Deadline postmark May 21, 2021
Winner announced in summer 2021
2020 Winner and Pushcart Prize nominee
Jeanine Stevens
Title Poem
Gertrude Sitting
Photograph by Man Ray of Gertrude Stein
sitting for sculptor Jo Davidson, 1926
So much heaviness here.
Moisture makes the single window sweat.
“I could have worn crepe and jewels
but just a plain shirt, puckered blouse,
sturdy boots, like an old washer woman.
Left my brooch at home, fixed my hair in a top knot,
few pins, no fancy wave set. Someday—
Cut it short!
Better things to do, but all part of the ‘business.’
Hunched, my back aches, an exotic scarab.
A glass of Bordeaux might help, rub a dub.
My mind wanders to last night’s soiree,
no time to clean the cluttered plates and wine glasses.
Did Alice remember to pay the plumber?
What savory cassoulét is she considering today?
I’m facing the back of the other me;
Jo sculpts my waistline and good luck with that!
Behind me, other works of young, slender women.
Surrounded by rough planks, stairs and risers,
I feel like a stacked hay bale.”
So much is heavy set here: sitter,
art piece, balcony,
rough platform, chunks of light…
sculpture
larger than Gertrude,
Gertrude larger than clay.
Judge
Trish Lindsey Jaggers, author of De-Composition: Rigor Mortis (Local Gems Poetry Press, 2019) & Holonym: a collection of poems (Finishing Line Press, 2016) is an award-winning Kentucky poet. She earned her MFA in Creative Writing from Spalding University. She makes her home on a small farm in Chalybeate, Kentucky and is an assistant professor of English at Western Kentucky University where she teaches composition, literature, and creative writing and mentors a flock of young (and older) writers.
