The 2017 DC Poet Project was produced through support from LISC DC, the DC Commission on the Arts, and project partners The DC Public Library, Upshur Street Books, American Poetry Museum, and BRINK media.

The project began March 25, 2017 with a poetry workshop, taught by Abdul Ali, and continued with a poetry reading series and connected open mic events. At each event poetry reading, the feature poets selected a “winning” open mic reader, and those “winners” were invited to compete at the final event for a book contract and cash award.

The finalists selected by the featuring poets were: Michael Cameron, Rose Strode, John Johnson, and Susan Meehan.

Thanks to our partner Brink Media, you can view videos of the feature poets and the Finalists reading their poetry on Facebook here.

Click here to read more about the winning poet’s forthcoming book, Talking to the Night. 

To read more about the project, check out this blog post.

Poet Gregory Luce served as the DC Poet Project Reading Series Director. He is the author of the chapbooks Signs of Small Grace (Pudding House Publications) and Drinking Weather (Finishing Line Press), and the collection, Memory and Desire (Sweatshoppe Publications.) His poems have appeared in numerous print and online journals, including Kansas Quarterly, Cimarron Review, Innisfree Poetry Review, If, Northern Virginia Review, Foundling Review, MiPOesias, Praxilla, Little Patuxent Review, The Rusty Nail, Rising Tide Review, Cactus Heart, Faircloth Review, and in the anthologies Living in Storms (Eastern Washington University Press) and Bigger Than They Appear (Accents Publishing).

Project Partners: