Shelter Island poetry contest winners announced

The winners of the 3rd Annual Bliss Morehead Poetry Grant competition have been announced by the grant committee.

The winner is Emily O’Reilly of Montauk for her poem “Legacy.” The theme for 2024 was “Hope and Grace.”

Honorable Mentions go to:

“Five Days Old” by Edward Brennan of Shelter Island

“Ode to a Single-Scull Boat,” by Ella Carriero of Remsenberg

“Pentimento,” by Bethany Moore of Shelter Island

Further details on the award, part of the Shelter Island Public Library Poetry Project, will appear on this site and in the Reporter’s print edtion next week.

In other news on the local literary front:

Virginia Walker of Shelter Island will read her poetry at Peconic Landing, Greenport, on Friday, April 19, at 4 p.m., in the auditorium of the Community Hall.

Bernard Hicks, another East End poet, will also read his poetry. Also known as “Bsolid the Poet,” he is Bronx-born and Harlem-raised. He has described poetry as “a gift of humanity, the soul of our nature, and the language of the arts.” 

The reading is open to the public.

This reading was originally scheduled for January but had to be canceled due to snow. 

Ms. Walker, co-author of the poetry book Neuron Mirror (along with Michael Walsh), which raised over $10,700 for the Lustgarten Foundation for Pancreatic Cancer Research and Cure, will read poems, she said, “About Shelter Island, the fractured world, and human interactions.”

Ms. Walker’s poetry has been published in The Humanist, the South Fork Naturalist, Suffolk County Poetry Review, Nassau Review, and many anthologies, such as Poets for Paris.

Ms. Walker is a retired college professor of English, with a Ph.D. from New York University. She taught for 40 years at colleges in New England and on Long Island.

For the past five years, she has curated poetry programs for the Shelter Island Library.