“The poem is always in your hometown, but you have a better chance of finding it in another.”
– Richard Hugo, The Triggering Town

PONY POETRY CONTEST:

I've created a poetry contest to honor Richard Hugo and The Pony Bar.

There will be a cash prize for the winner. And a reading at the bar. The submission deadline is December 31, 2011.

I love poems about real places and the Pony Bar is one of the great real places in the West. Emphasizing the importance of grounding in a sense of place, poems must be submitted in person at the Pony Bar, in the center of the town about six miles southwest of Harrison, MT. 

For this contest, "you have to go to Pony." Submissions will only be accepted if delivered in person to the Pony Bar.

When poet Richard Hugo visited Pony in the 1970s, he was so inspired that he wrote "Letter to Oberg from Pony," a well known poem that contains the lines: "I hope I die here. I want to spend my/ last years on the porch of the blue house…"  I returned thirty-five years later and wrote poems about Pony and my own visits there, inspired by Hugo. Both of us use informal styles without rhyme or meter and poems in the contest should be in a similar style.