Poetry Contest - Yakima Coffeehouse Poets

YAKIMA COFFEEHOUSE POETRY CONTEST
2025

YAKIMA COFFEEHOUSE POETRY CONTEST READING

Friday, May 16, 2025, 6:00pm
at the Larson Gallery
(Doors open at 5:00pm for a Reception prior to the Reading.)

Come to the Larson Gallery!

Enjoy complimentary munchies and wine for purchase.

Hear poetry from the Valley’s strangest, loudest, and most beautiful minds.

Bring your ears and your heart. We do accept donations, and copies of our thirtieth anniversary contest chapbook will be available for purchase (for a donation of $10! Only if you feel like it!).

Celebrate the arts, our most renewable resource for hope and community, and specifically poetry, the most accessible of these arts.

(No second Wednesday Open Mic Night in May!)

For any 2025 Contest questions, please contact us at:
YCPoetrycontest2025@gmail.com

The event has a history, one that got its start in 1994 as the brainchild of Elizabeth Herres Miller, a former executive director of Allied Arts of Yakima who thought a literary event would complement the nonprofit’ s visual arts calendar. The contest quickly caught on. In 2006, a second event was later added: “Open Mic Night,” a monthly spoken-word forum for local poets to read their own poetry. Unfortunately, while the fortunes of these poetry events waxed, those of Allied Arts waned. The nonprofit closed its doors in December 2013.

The current year Yakima Coffeehouse Poet chapbook is available for a $10 donation (plus $2.50 for postage) payable to YCP or at Inklings Bookshop in Yakima. This year’s and earlier chapbooks are still available by contacting Ed Stover at 509-833-8577 or via Email.

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