Joe Gouveia Outermost Poetry Contest Holds Belated Reading with Marge Piercy
NOVEMBER 12, 2020 7PM
Joe Gouveia Outermost Poetry Contest Holds Belated Celebration on Zoom
Evening to include readings from winning Cape Cod poets
MARGE PIERCY
Provincetown, MA, October 23, 2020: The Joe Gouveia Outermost Poetry Contest’s evening reading and celebration, usually held in the spring, will now take place on November 12th at 7pm as a live online event, community radio station WOMR announced today.
The contest, named for the late Cape Cod poet laureate Joe Gouveia, every year elicits hundreds of entries from all over the country and Canada. Novelist and poet Marge Piercy judges the poetry, and selected local poets have traditionally been invited to appear for an evening event at Wellfleet Preservation Hall in the spring where they read their winning poems.
With gatherings canceled due to the pandemic, the event was postponed, and will instead take place via teleconferencing platform Zoom.
“It seemed unfortunate to just sweep this year’s winners under the rug,” says John Braden, WOMR executive director. “Like everyone else in this very strange year, we’re finding new and sometimes unusual ways of being together, and it just made sense to give poets the opportunity to share their work, and the community the opportunity to hear the winning poems.”
The event is free and open to the public, but you will need to email the station’s office for a Zoom link at
And just as last year’s winners are celebrating, the 8th annual contest is already underway, with a January 12th postmark deadline. As in previous years, Marge Piercy will select finalists for both the national and regional categories, with $1,300 in prizes to be awarded ($1,000 to the national winner and $300 to a regional, Cape Cod-based poet).
Poets may enter up to five unpublished poems of any style or subject matter—no more than seven pages in total—and a $15 submission fee with a check made payable to Outermost Community Radio with “Poetry Contest” written in the memo line of the check. Winners and finalists will be announced on February 16th, 2021, with announcements posted on the Joe Gouveia Outermost Poetry Contest Facebook page and at WOMR.org.
More information about both the November 12th event and this year’s contest can be obtained by emailing info@womr.org or calling the station at 508.487.2619
About WOMR/WFMR: WOMR is a noncommercial, nonprofit educational community radio station offering an eclectic blend of music and spoken-word programming since March 21st, 1982 and broadcasting from Provincetown, Massachusetts—making it “outermost radio.”
WOMR is not affiliated with any educational institution and derives its financial support from listeners, businesses and funding organizations. More information at