The deadline is June 30.

Poets may live anywhere in the world as long as they are U. S. citizens. All entries must be in English.

Winning poems of state senior poets laureate will be named in July, following which they advance to final rounds of competition from which the winner of the 2011 National Senior Poet Laureate (500) and runner up ($100) awards will be announced Sept. 1.

Winner of the 2010 National Senior Poet Laureate Award was Regina Murray Brault of Burlington, Vt.

Runner up was Edward C. Robson of Winston-Salem, N. Car.

The 2010 winners can be seen in Golden Words Anthology, along with details about the 2011 Senior Poets Laureate Competition at the sponsor’s Web site, www.amykitchenerfdn.org.

The American Philharmonic season finale performances will take place at Wells Fargo Center in Santa Rosa on Saturday, May 21, at 8 p.m., and Sunday, May 22, at 3 p.m.

Renowned violinist and conductor Jeremy Cohen will lead the “people’s orchestra” in music of Mexican composer Jose Pablo Moncayo, Cuban composer Julian Orbon, Spanish composer Joaquin Turina and others.

Bay Area-based Cohen, a violinist and composer, is a multiple Grammy nominee and founder of the acclaimed San Francisco Quartet.

QuinTango, a Washington-DC based chamber ensemble dedicated to the musical performance of tango will present works by Tango legends Carlos Gardel, Astor Piazzolla and others of the golden age.

Sharing the stage with the Philharmonic and QuinTango will be the renowned Tango performers Anton Gazenbeek and Carolina Jaurena.

Gazenbeek is founding director of The School of Traditional Argentine Tango. Jaurena has performed at major concert halls and tango festivals internationally. This international duo has performed to great acclaim. This will be their first Sonoma County appearance.

Tickets to QuinTango are free of charge and feature open seating. The suggested donation is $20.

On Sunday, May 1, at 11 a.m. at the Santa Rosa Church of One Tree, Jeremy Cohen will give a special violin demonstration about tango: its influence and style in music.

This event is a fundraiser for American Philharmonic. Tickets for May 1 are $25.

For more information visit www.apsonoma.org or call 707-542 6238.

Joni Wellington dances in the 10th annual Spring Dance Festival at Mendocino College in Ukiah, Calif., from May 6 through May 8, 2011. Courtesy photo.

UKIAH, Calif. – On the heels of sold out performances of the musical Cats, Mendocino College Dance Department and Dance Club present the 10th annual Spring Dance Festival, a true celebration of the diversity of dance.

Contemporary, jazz, hip hop, ballet, Mexican Folkloric, Capoeira, Brazilian, Salsa Rueda, Middle Eastern and more – just a handful of dance forms that will delight those who attend this event on Friday, May 6, and Saturday, May 7, at 8 p.m., and Sunday, May 8, at 2 p.m. in the Mendocino College Center Theatre on the Ukiah Campus, 1000 Hensley Creek Drive.

“The Mendocino College Spring Dance Festival has grown and become a celebrated tradition in our community,” said Leslie Saxon West, professor of dance at Mendocino College. “This dance event celebrates a form of art that goes beyond boundaries, uniting people from every walk of life all over the world.”

The dances that will be presented at the festival represent the variety of dance classes that are offered at Mendocino College.

One of these is Capoeira, a form of movement that combines music, martial arts and dance with roots in Africa and Brazil.

Capoeira students will be performing with the Brazilian dance and drum class, under the direction of instructors Mestre Amunka Davila and Erika Smallen.

The piece, entitled 'Amor, Tambor, Vida e Morte” celebrates the 19th century Carnaval in Brazil with its festive dances, romances, dramas and, at times, tragedies.

Cuban-style Salsa Rueda has become very popular at the college recently, with Erika Smallen at the helm as instructor and choreographer of a dance called Somos Cubanos.

The song and music are a joyous expression of Cuban cultural identity.

Smallen elaborates on her dance, “I wanted the piece to have some of the historical themes represented in the song. For this purpose, I included some folkloric movement from rumba and Orisha dance into the Casino (Cuban style salsa) Rueda.”

Mexican Folkloric dance Instructor Juvenal Vasquez and his students will again be performing several dances in this year’s festival.

Included are “El Saludo” and “El Zapateado,” which are usually performed by the youth who imitate older people with humorous movements.

According to Vasquez, “The dancers are not making fun of the older people, they are honoring them.”

Many other forms of dance will also be presented. Bernadette Alverio-Gray, popular jazz, contemporary/modern and hip hop instructor, has choreographed several dances with her classes.

“Wasted,” a contemporary social commentary represents an atmospheric realization of the waste and pollution we as a society cast upon nature and the environment.

Two hip hop dances, “One Stop Smog Shop” and “The Tune Up,' are fun and energetic and take place in a car garage. Alverio-Gray has danced in the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre summer and certificate programs and the acclaimed Bates Dance Festival.

Middle Eastern dance instructor Janice Re has choreographed two pieces for this event.

One, entitled “Battle,” has a quiet section in the middle of the music which evokes a sense of sleepiness and dreaminess. Some of the dancers engage in a moment of rest on the floor while others emerge as their dreamy visions cause them to spin about with white veils.

The other dance, entitled “Unknown Hand,” is very mechanical which inspires sharp body movements portraying the body as a machine.

Eddie Vedolla Jr. presents “groovin’” Nightclub 2-Step, Cha Cha and Hustle to versions of the song, “Billie Jean.”

Audience members will also be treated to a modern ballet choreographed by Kirsten Turner, entitled “The Wind and the Sun,” to the music of Phillip Glass, “Tis of Thee,” a solo dance choreographed by Mercy Sidbury and performed by Miriam McNamara,

All tickets for the dance festival are $6 and may be purchased in advance at the Mendocino College Bookstore and the Mendocino Book Co. in Ukiah.

Tickets may also be ordered in advance by calling 707-468-3079. Tickets may also be purchased at the door if available.

A listing of college activities is online at www.mendocino.edu .

The performance will start at 5:30 p.m. and continue to as late as 8:30 p.m. at Williams' Silk's Bar & Grill.

Silk's Bar & Grill is located at 14825 Lakeshore Drive, Clearlake.

Call 707-995-7455 to reserve a table, as seating is limited.

"Story of the World" is a secular oratorio composed by Carolyn Hawley for chorus and orchestra. It is written to a set of poems by California poet Kenneth Klauss.

Hawley purchased a copy of the poems from Klauss on the streets of Sausalito in the early 1970s. She was so taken by the beauty and the wisdom of Klauss' poetry, that years later she composed this hour long oratorio.

The poems are a prehistory of our world, before mankind. The musical score, as yet unperformed, took Hawley more than 20 years to write. The cost of having union musicians and a choir perform it is too excessive for most professional orchestras, so this may be the only time anyone now alive may hear a version of it.

On April 30, Hawley will share an electronic version of a piano reduction of the score, while reading aloud the poems. There will be a repeat broadcast of the program on Monday, May 2, at 11 p.m.

Hawley's other large composition for chorus and orchestra is called “Russian River Mass,” which was performed in Ukiah and Willits in 1988 during Hawley's tenure as conductor of the Ukiah Symphony and Mendocino Chorus.

Ted Kooser, US Poet Laureate from 2004 to 2006. Photo by UNL Publications and Photography.

Our wars come home, sooner or later. Judith Harris lives in Washington, D.C., and in this poem gives us a veteran of Iraq back among the ordinary activities of American life.

End of Market Day

At five, the market is closing.

Burdock roots, parsley, and rutabagas

are poured back into the trucks.

The antique dealer breaks down his tables.

Light dappled, in winter parkas

shoppers hunt for bargains:

a teapot, or costume jewelry,

a grab bag of rubbishy vegetables for stew.

Now twilight, the farmer’s wife

bundled in her tweed coat and pocket apron

counts out her cash from a metal box,

and nods to her grown-up son

back from a tour in Iraq,

as he waits in the station wagon

with the country music turned way up,

his prosthetic leg gunning the engine.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2009 by Judith Harris, whose most recent book of poetry is The Bad Secret, Louisiana State University Press, 2006. Poem reprinted from The Southern Review, Vol. 46, no. 1, 2009, by permission of Judith Harris and the publisher. Introduction copyright © 2011 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. They do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.