Poetree Contest Results

1^st place: Green by Loretta Diane Walker    $40 (£25.00)

2^nd place: Green Man by A C Clarke    $25 (£15.00)

3^rd place: A Love Affair by Andrea Dietrich   $10 (£6.00)

Top twenty:

*1.   Green by Loretta Diane Walker

*2.   Green Man by A C Clarke

*3.   A Love Affair by Andrea Dietrich

*4.   The Task by Geoff Roberts

*5.   If Trees Could Talk by Neal Wilgus

*6.   Dark Bliss by Sue Bunce

*7.   I am a Tree by Kathy Larson

*8.   The Horse of Shaun by Peter Asher

*9.   Stand Alone Cedar at Hammonasset by Carol Leavitt Altieri

*10. Waggoner’s Well in Summer by Michael Wright

*11. The Mulberry Tree by Shirley Reese

*12. The Tree Rings by Phil Knight

*13. Make of Me a Tree by Henry Newton Goldman

*14. Betula Pendula: The White Goddess Outside My Garden Gate by Etelka Marcel

*15. The Lone White Birch by Brenda B. Sloane

*16. Twig Hangs by Julie Rutherford

*17. Poet Tree in Motion by Joy Campbell

*18. Fossil Grove by A C Clarke   

*19. October Leaves the Trees “Deleaving” by Esther M. Leiper

*20. The Tree Man by Gerald Hampshire

* Top twenty will receive a complimentary copy of the chapbook

Honorable mentions (in no particular order):

Staverton Thicks by Richard Stewart

Our Almond Tree by Vivien Steels   

An Empty Pair of Shoes by Joyce Walker 

Chawton Park Woods in Autumn by Michael Wright

At the Gates of Heaven by Ursula Studd

Connecticut Summer by Llewelyn H Nicholas

Axe-men by Tina Negus

The Tree by Phil Knight

Fair Cherries by Peter Asher

Treefrog’s Jungle Blues by A C Clarke

In Memoriam – Friday October 16^th 1987 by Richard Stewart

Yew Tree at Broadwell by Tina Negus

Norfolk Childhood by Richard Stewart

Autumn Leaves by Julie Rutherford

The Old Apple Tree by Yvonne Sparks

Imagine Just a Heather Moor by June Worsell

Tree Talk by Mavis Gulliver

Hazel Leys by Geoff Williams

Langdyke Bush by Cardinal Cox

The Walnut Tree by Peggy Poole

A Sycamore Survives by Carolyn Constable

Tree by Lynn A. Huber

Sepia Photograph of a Redwood Stump by Suzanne Delaney

At the Gravesite of a Tree by Susan Block

Upright Citizens by Jerri Hardesty

To an Ancient Cottonwood by Lee Enslow

The Melody of Trees by Margaret R. Smith

Timing by Connie Johnson

The Shoe Tree by Betty Lou Hebert

Strip Tease by Carrie Backe

My Tree’s Seasonal Dress by Mary A. Couch

I Found God: Next to a Tree by James Eric Watkins

To the Maples That I Planted by Larry Hand

A Solitary Tree by David LaRue Alexander

Once a Private Porch by Velvet Fackeldey

White Pines by William K. Buckley

Sky Net by Carey Link

Old Trees by Annetta Talbot Beauchamp

City Tree by Nancy Bowman Ballard

Tree of Ages by Jan Turner

All sixty poems above will be published in the chapbook Leaves of Poetry: A Book of Tree Poems, which will benefit Ancient Forest International. For more information on the organization, visit the following website:

http://www.ancientforests.org/about_afi.htm

For those who enclosed a SAE, the results will be mailed out soon. 

Thank you very much to all of you who entered.  The contest was a success.  There were a total of 249 entries! 

We most likely will be able to fit additional poems in the chapbook, but we do not know how many more at this time.  if additional poems are selected, we will notify the poets whose work we chose for publication.  The chapbook is still in the production process, and an announcement will be make on this site as soon as it is due for release.  To order a copy, go to www.shadowpoetry.com

The competition was about poems written on behalf of, or in homage to, those masters of the shade, givers of fruit and life and, not forgetting, the paper on which we write – our neglected arboreal friends and companions – the TREES!  We don’t need to tell you that nearly 36 million acres of natural forest is lost each year.  All anyone has to do is look at the area in which they live.  Think of how it looked a century ago, even a decade ago, and how much of the natural landscape of trees has given way to development.  The aim of this competition is to remind people of the importance of trees, not only for their color and beauty, but as a habitat for wildlife, a source of food, medicine and, ultimately, of life.