Tag: Events

PoemTown Randolph 2026: Call for Submissions


April is National Poetry Month! PoemTown Randolph is looking forward to its 13th year! The PoemTown team has opened up solicitation of original poetry to be considered for publication on broadsides to be posted in windows on the streets of Randolph and along the river trail during the month of April 2026, and to be featured in the 13th print anthology, PoemTown Randolph 2026.

All poets submitting to PoemTown Randolph are also eligible to apply for the third year of our writer grants. You may apply if you did not receive one of our grants in the previous two years. If you are interested in applying, please go to the form here – https://tinyurl.com/5n8cmt7s. The grant application deadline is 2/28/26. 

Instructions for Submission:

Please follow these instructions carefully. Failure to abide by these instructions may result in automatic rejection of poems.

  • The deadline for submission is February 15, 2026. 
  • PoemTown accepts submissions from poets of any age residing in Vermont.
  • Please do not submit poems previously selected by PoemTown Randolph.
  • Do not submit poems that have previously been published elsewhere in print or online.
  • Do not submit poems that have previously been displayed in any PoemTown or PoemCity celebrations. 
  • Submissions are limited to two original poems. 
  • Poems are limited to 24 lines, including title. 

Type the name of the poet and town of residence at the bottom of each poem – DO NOT include “VT” as part of the town name. (This information is not shared with the judges of the poems, but is helpful when the chosen poems are submitted to the designer who prepares the broadsides and the published anthology.)

Poems must be submitted by email to musbird@gmail.com with PoemTown 2025 in the subject line. Each poem must be attached as a separate document in .doc, .docx, or .rtf file formats.  The document name shall be the title of the poem. PDF files will not be accepted.

In the text of the email, include the poet’s contact information: name, mailing address, email address, and telephone number. 

Poets without access to email should contact Janet Watton at 802-728-9402 by February 15, 2025 to request an alternate submission process.

*  Accepted poems will automatically be published in the PoemTown 2026 anthology.  Poets who do not wish to have their poems published in the anthology must state this exemption in their submission email.

*  By sending work to PoemTown Randolph 2026, poets agree that PoemTown may use any poem in display, in promotional materials, and in associated online, print and other media. Poets will be credited for their work in all places their poems appear. 

2025 PoemTown Event Schedule & Bios

7 PM start for all events 

Friday, April 4  – Open Mic, White River Craft Center

Thursday, April 10 – VT Poet Laureate Bianca Stone – Esther Mesh Room, Chandler Center for the Arts

Saturday, April 19 – Local poets Danny Dover and Ina Anderson – Kimball Library

Saturday, April 26 – Silloway Maple Farmer Poets – Taylor Mardis Katz, an herb farmer; Katie Spring, a vegetable and flower farmer; and Greg Bernhardt, a goat farmer and cheesemaker

Bios

Bianca Stone is the author of five books, including the poetry collections, What is Otherwise Infinite (Tin House, 2022), winner of the 2022 Vermont Book Award and The Möbius Strip Club of Grief (Tin House, 2018) and the forthcoming The Near and Distant World (Tin House, 2026). Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Poetry, The Nation, and elsewhere. She co-founded and is creative director for the poetry-based nonprofit Ruth Stone House, where she teaches and hosts the Ode & Psyche Podcast. She is currently serving as the 2024-2029 Vermont Poet Laureate.

Bianca Stone
Ina Anderson

Ina Anderson was born and raised in Cumbria in the northwest of England. She has now lived in Vermont for many years.  Her first work was in editing scientific journals, including Icarus: International Journal of Solar System Science, with editor Carl Sagan.  She later took to teaching, spending over twenty years at the Community College of Vermont as a faculty member and student advisor. Ina’s poems have appeared in many publications, including Birchsong, This Place I Know, When All This Is Over, The Mountain Troubadour, and Literary North.  Several of her poems appeared in the Pie Poets anthologies, Perhaps It Was the Pie, 2014, and The Party Cabinet, 2023.  Her first collection, Journey Into Space, published in 2017 by Antrim House, was nominated for a Pushcart prize.  Her newest collection, Sky Furniture, was published by Kelsay Books in 2024.

Danny Dover is a retired piano technician living in Bethel, Vermont. Since 1995 his poems have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies and in two previously published collections: Tasting Precious Metal and Kindness Soup, Thankful Tea. His third book, Flamingo Nation (Onion River Press), was released last year. In the words of James Crews, author of Unlocking the Heart and Kindness Will Save the World: “Every poem [in Flamingo Nation]…. is precise yet effortless….Danny Dover cares deeply about his readers, crafting poems that help to make our ‘hardened world’ a better, more compassionate place…… I’m in love with the light-filled kindness that lives at the center of this life-giving and necessary new book.”

Danny Dover
Greg Bernhardt

Greg Bernhardt is the author of Goats & Those Who Live by Them and the novel When Everything Was Possible. Greg is also a professional painter and an artisanal cheesemaker and farmer at Blue Ledge Farm, which he and his wife, Hannah Sessions, established in Addison County, Vermont in 2000. It is this livelihood, making cheese, making hay, animal husbandry, and working alongside his wife, which provides the subject matter he reflects upon in both painting and writing.

Katie Spring is a writer, mother, and co-creator of Good Heart Farmstead in Worcester, Vermont. She believes that creativity is as essential as food, and her writing is a testament to the ways that creativity nourishes us. Katie’s newsletter, Art & Soil, explores how we grow a world of connection, belonging, and really good food. Find her online at katiespring.substack.com.

Katie Spring
Taylor Mardis Katz

Taylor Mardis Katz is a poet, herb farmer, and shopkeeper living in Chelsea, VT. A native New Yorker, she has lived in Vermont since 2012, when she and her partner started Free Verse Farm. Taylor’s poems have been published in a variety of literary journals and nontraditional periodicals, recited on radio stations across the state, featured on the podcast Brave Little State, and shown up in all sorts of other wild and whimsical places. While still in the process of finding a home for her first full-length manuscript, she is working to publish a letterpress chapbook with a local printmaker this winter.