INTRODUCING THE NORTHERN ISLANDER POETRY CONTEST

March 08, 2026

by Brittney Rittof

In the most recent edition, we introduced a poetry format called haiku. In honor of the poetry contest, we’d like to introduce another form of poetry called “sonnets.” The oldest type of sonnet is the Italian or Petrarchan sonnet with 14 lines and a distinctive rhyming pattern of ABBA ABBA in the first stanza, and either CDECDE or CDCDCD in the second stanza. The most famous is the Shakespearean sonnet, which still contains 14 lines, but the rhyme scheme is ABAB CDCD EFEF GG. The four stanzas can be separate or linked together. William Shakespeare used a rhythm called iambic pentameter, which can be found in his most famous sonnet, Sonnet 18:

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?

Thou art more lovely and more temperate:

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,

And summer’s lease hath all too short a date:

Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,

And often is his gold complexion dimm’d;

And every fair from fair sometime declines,

By chance, or nature’s changing course, untrimm’d;

But thy eternal summer shall not fade

Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st;

Nor shall Death brag thou wander’st in his shade,

When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st;

So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,

So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

(Source: https://www.scribophile.com/academy/types-of-poetry)

Details

Open to all ages with an island connection

The poems must be related to Beaver Island

They can be either two short poems (3 to 12 lines) or one long poem (15-25 lines)

How to Enter

Submissions can be emailed to editorassistant@beaverislandhistory.org or editor@beaverislandhistory.org, or dropped off at the Print Shop Museum

To be eligible, the poems will be published in the paper in the following edition. Poems can be requested to be kept private, however these will be ineligible for consideration.

Submissions will be accepted starting in March through July, with April being the first edition to feature poems, and August being the last issue

Voting & Results

Voting opens in the September and October editions, as well as online, and the results will be published in the November edition

The winner will receive $150 and a free, year-long subscription to the Northern Islander