by Dennis Dalman
editor@thenewsleaders.com
Two Sartell poets and three of their friends in their poetry group recently won prestigious awards in the National Federation of State Poetry Society, with one of them, a St. Cloud poet, winning Grand Prize.
Altogether, the poets won a stunning number of awards – more than two dozen of them.
All are members of the Grand View Poets of Sartell and are also members of the League of Minnesota Poets, which is affiliated with the National Federation.
The poets are Micki Blenkush, St. Cloud, who won the Grand Prize, a second-place award, third-place award, five merit awards and two honorable mentions; Dennis Herschbach, Sartell, who won a first-place award, a second-place award and four merit awards; Sidney Lo, Sartell, who won a merit award; Sandy Bott-Miller, St. Cloud, who won a first-place award, a merit award and an honorable mention; and Mary Willette Hughes, Waite Park, who won a first-place award, a merit award and a citation.
The Grand View Poets meet at a public room in the Grand View Estates Apartments, where they sit down to read and critique one another’s poetic efforts. They have won many other awards in the past for their poems.
For the national contest, poets were permitted to enter in one or all of 22 categories. Nearly 2,000 poems were submitted by poets in both the United States and Canada.
Monetary prizes were given for first-, second- and third-place awards, and certificates were given for other awards.
Blenkush won Grand Prize for her poem entitled New Year’s Morning, which judges deemed best of the more than 200 poems entered in that category. Unfortunately, the Newsleader cannot share any of that poem with readers because there is a previous agreement to publish the poem exclusively in another publication.
The award-wining poets in the Grand View Poets of Sartell group are (left to right) Dennis Hersbach, Mary Willette Hughes, Sandy Bott and Micki Blenkush. Not pictured is poet Sidney Lo.
