Entries are now being accepted for regional winners in the 18th annual National Senior Poets Laureate Poetry Competition for American poets age 50 and older, in which the Georgia Senior Poet Laureate is sought. Deadline is June 30.

 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 $500 and the 2010 National Senior Poet Laureate title will be announced around Sept. 1.

 The late Barbara Ruth Sampson of Stockbridge won the 2004 National Senior Poet Laureate Award for her poem "Return in the Spring." Emery L. Campbell of Lawrenceville won the 2009 Georgia Senior Poet Laureate Award with his poem "Frogs in Earnest." Winner of the 2009 National Senior Poet Laureate Award was Patricia Frolander, 66, a rancher from Sundance, Wyo.

 Co-sponsors Vera-Jane Goodin Schultz and Wanda Sue Parrott founded the contest administered by Amy Kitchener’s Angels Without Wings Foundation in 1993. The 2009 winners can be seen in Golden Words Anthology, along with rules for the 2010 Senior Poets Laureate Contest, at www.amykitchenerfdn.org