Poetry and Music Competition 2012

Closing Date — Friday, November 23

As the conductor of the UMM Symphonic Winds I would like to invite you to take part in a poetry and music competition as part of one of our music events at the end of this semester.

The Challenge

All you have to do is to write a poem inspired by one of the pieces of music in the Symphonic Winds Concert scheduled for Wednesday, December 7, 2012, 7:30 p.m. Your poem will be judged by professor Athena Kildegaard and myself. The winners will have their poems read out at the concert and published university-wide. You will also be invited to attend the concert.

Getting started

• Poetry is often about doing the wrong thing, speaking too loudly or knocking things over. In other words, be bold with your work.
• Think carefully about the piece of music. How does it make you feel? Does it remind you of a place you’ve been to or a person you know? Does it feel like a story, a description, or simply a handful of words thrown into the air? Any of those are fine. What we are looking for is your personal response to a piece of music. You don’t have to write how it got written or what the composer meant by it, unless you really want to. Think outside the box.
• It doesn’t have to rhyme, but it can.
• Try hard to avoid the word music. It’s not a rule, just there to make you think.

What you have to do

1. Choose a piece of music from our concert in December. You can hear some clips below:
   Angel Camp Charles Cushing
   Tramonto for Solo Cello and Winds Luis Serrano Alarcon
   Augenblick for Winds and Electronics Christopher Stark
   Elegy for Miles Davis Richard Rodney Bennett
   Winter Dances (one, two, three) Fergal Carroll
2. Write your poem (up to 25 lines in length)
3. Submit your poem to Simon Tillier at stillier@morris.umn.edu as a pdf file or a Word document including your name and student ID number
4. The closing date is Friday, November 23, 2012.

Good Luck!

Professor Simon Tillier

Poetry and Music Competition 2012 Poster »