The Howard County Poetry and Literature Society (HoCoPoLitSo) is pleased to announce that Mickie Kennedy of the Baltimore area has been awarded first prize in the 2024 Ellen Conroy Kennedy Poetry Contest for the poem “Aubade With Peaches, Eggs, and Hissing Garlic.” Judges shared they appreciated the rich, incisive sensory language; skilled technical precision and powerful restraint within the form; and deep emotional resonance of this both contemporary and timeless love poem. A $500 cash prize was awarded, and the poem was published in the Winter 2025 edition of The Little Patuxent Review.

Neha Misra of Silver Spring was awarded second place with a $100 cash prize for the poem “Vanishing Gardens Return,” in recognition of the poem’s skillful use of form, vivid and original imagery, and compact storytelling. Judges noted their appreciation for the work’s familial, social, and cultural resonance.

Judges selected an additional three poets’ entries for honorable mention: Lauren Benoit of Russell, Massachusetts for “A Poem for Robert Bly”; Kari Martindale of Ijamsville for “The Beaches of Normandie”; and Jared Smith of Ellicott City for “Reaching Into the Rivers.”

Contest judges evaluated 46 submissions from poets residing across six states for mechanics and technique, clarity, style/music for our contemporary age, imagery/sensory power, and emotional resonance. Each author receiving an award was invited to be interviewed for a blog post hosted at hocopolitso.org.

The Ellen Conroy Kennedy Poetry Prize was established to honor HoCoPoLitSo co-founder Ellen Conroy Kennedy, who passed away in 2020. Ms. Kennedy, who was nominated for the National Book Award in Translation in 1969, translated Francophone African and Caribbean poets, and published her landmark work, The Negritude Poets, in 1975.

Kennedy founded HoCoPoLitSo in 1974, a nationally recognized, community-based nonprofits arts organization that has brought hundreds of writers to Howard County, Maryland, and this year celebrates its 50th anniversary. She served as president and CEO for 30 years, opening her home and sharing her table with an array of literary icons. She also developed and produced The Writing Life, originally a cable television series, featuring conversations with writers, now available free on HoCoPoLitSo’s YouTube channel where it has been seen by more over a million lovers of literature from around the world. In 2019, the Kennedys donated more than 1,500 books, most of which featured authors who read for HoCoPoLitSo audiences, to the Howard Community College library; the Kennedy Collection is housed in a reading room open to the public during normal business hours.

HoCoPoLitSo works to cultivate appreciation for contemporary poetry and literature and celebrate culturally diverse literary heritages. The society sponsors literary readings; the Bauder Writer-in-Residence outreach program to local schools; produces The Writing Life; and partners with the public schools and cultural organizations to support the arts in Howard County, Maryland. For more information, visit http://www.hocopolitso.org.