COPPER NICKEL AND BLACK DIAMOND: It's not too late to enter Copper Nickel's Literary Contest!

By
OKAY, so the connection is a stretch.  But when COPPER NICKEL (the journal of art and literature published by the University of Colorado Denver) announced their first fiction and poetry CONTEST, I had to check it out.  The term copper nickel was originally applied to the Indian Head cent coin.  From 1913-1938, U.S. mints began producing the Indian Head nickel. The front side of the coin features the profile of an iconic Native American man, said to be a compilation of features from 4 prominent Native American men: Iron Tail, an Oglala Sioux chief; Two Moons, a Cheyenne chief; Big Tree, a Kiowa chief; and possibly John Big Tree, a member of the Seneca Nation.
The model for the bison on the back side of the coin is believed to have been BLACK DIAMOND, a bull from NY's Central Park Zoo.  He lived a long life but died a rather humbling death.

Now, let's talk about the literary Copper Nickel.  This impressive journal isn't just a publication for student writing.  It also features the poetry and prose of professional authors, like Pattiann Rogers and Lee Ann Roripaugh, or Alyson Hagy and Mary Clearman Blew.  "Weaving the Web," a short fiction piece of mine written while I was sequestered for a month in a mountain cabin, appears in Copper Nickel 10.  If you'd like a PDF of the story, send me a note.

Here's the low-down on the competition:  DEADLINE EXTENDED TO MAY 31!  Ten days away!  It's a two-part competition: poetry, and fiction.  Fiction submissions will be judged by RON CARLSON, author of one of my favorite writing books, Ron Carlson Writes A Story, published by Greywolf Press.  The winner will receive $1000 and publication in Copper Nickel 15 in Spring 2011.

The poetry contest will be judged by NATASHA TRETHEWAY, Pulitzer-Prize Winning author of Native Guard.  Her first poetry collection, Domestic Work was also published by Graywolf Press.

So don't wait.  Check out Copper Nickel's first literary competition now.  SUBMIT YOUR WORK.  When you do, think about what inspired your story or your poem and take a moment to honor the history of your words. 

And the next time you see an old Indian Nickel with a bison on the back, think of Black Diamond and the four nations that Iron Tail, and Two Moons, and Big Tree, and John Big Tree represent. Unlike Black Diamond, these nations, and OVER 500 OTHERS, are still alive and well.
An advisor for the Rocky Mountain Land Library and member of the International League of Conservation Writers, Page Lambert has been writing about the western landscape and leading nature retreats in the West for twenty years. Founding member of Women Writing the West, member of Wyoming Writers and Colorado Authors’ League, Lambert’s writing can be found inside monumental sculptures at the Denver Art Museum, online at Huffington Post, and inside the pages of dozens of anthologies. Page designs and teaches graduate writing courses for the University of Denver’s University College. Recent published works include “Not for Sale” (Langscape Magazine and “The Rural West,” included in Fulcrum’s new book, The Light Shines from the West. Forthcoming are 3 poems in DoveTails: Writing for Peace. Page writes All Things Literary/All Things Natural from her mountain home west of Denver.

Comments

Anonymous said…
Hi Page ~ As always, thanks for your attention to detail and the nudge to keep writing and putting ourselves out there. We all need the linked hands of committed presence. Write on! Julie
May 21, 2010 at 1:27 PM
Connecting People with Nature, and Writers with Words said…
I love your phrase "linked hands of committed presence" - nice! And thank you for the comment. Hope you'll check out Copper Nickel.
May 21, 2010 at 2:06 PM
Renaissance Women said…
Page,
It sounds like a wonderful contest and your research on the name was so interesting. (I collected coins with my brother at a young age, too young to know the stories).

Thank you.
May 21, 2010 at 11:22 PM
Connecting People with Nature, and Writers with Words said…
I always wondered about the history of the Indian nickel so it was fun to do a little research!
May 22, 2010 at 11:14 AM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Celtic Blood, Cherokee Blood, and Nature's Earthly Spirits

By
Image
Helen Terry Dunton c. 1912 When I asked my redheaded Great Aunt Violet, who died many years ago but in whose western saddle I still ride, to tell me what she remembered about my paternal grandmother, she said, "Well, besides being a crack shot with a rifle, Helen was part Irish, and part Cherokee , and that wasn't a very good thing to be back then."   Auntie Vi was from the Dunton clan, my father's clan. "We have Scots blood," was the pronouncement, and I took it to mean that Scots blood was somehow superior to the Irish blood my grandfather had married into.  The Cherokee blood was rarely mentioned, and never with "princess" lineage claims. I continue to research this claim but have found no direct lineage tying me to enrolled ancestors, only the names of distant cousins and ties to Cherokee communities in Oklahoma such as Wauhillau and Stillwell. Beyond the American Pale In David M. Emmons book, Beyond the American Pale: The Irish in t
READ MORE »

The Moral Dilemma of My Mother's Mink: Earning Our Place in the World

By
Image
My mother’s mink stole and two fur collars, one sable, one white, have been hanging in the back of my closet since she died five years ago.  I remember how beautiful she looked to me as a child when she wore her mink—how the soft fur graced her bare sloping shoulders and showed off her own mother’s strand of pearls—how proud my father looked as he offered my mother his arm. The mink stole symbolized to my father his ability and desire to provide for my mother (not unlike what his grandfather must have felt when he dragged a deer back to his waiting wife). Old Fugate Sawmill, Stringtown, OK read essay My grandmother never wore a mink stole, though.  She had been born in Indian Territory—the child of a laboring, mixed-blood family that logged for the railroad companies as they laid track from Arkansas and Kentucky and Oklahoma west to Washington.  Judging from old family photos, they ate a lot of deer meat—and rabbit.  Members of the weasel family, no doubt, provided food and fur an
READ MORE »

Why Vultures Lie in Wait, and Deepak Chopra’s Law of Least Effort

By
Image
I grew up believing that STRIVING towards goals and feeling DRIVEN in one’s passions were necessary components of success. They can also be exhausting components of success.  Deepak Chopra, in his book The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success , talks about the Law of Least Effort. “Nature’s intelligence functions with effortless ease…this is the principle of least action, of no resistance.” But what of all those long tedious hours of writing and rewriting? What of all the hours spent networking, following up leads, peaking under every stone for missed opportunities? The carrion-eating vultures I encounter on early-morning hikes got me to thinking that maybe Deepak Chopra is right. “Grass doesn’t try to grow, it just grows,” he tells us. “Birds don’t try to fly, they fly.”  Vultures are “least effort” opportunists, willing to watch and wait, poking their bald red heads into putrefying places and coming up with enough to feed themselves and their not-too-picky young. Patient eno
READ MORE »