League of Minnesota Poets

[2] According to a 2006 article in the Mankato Free Press an effort was made by the Mankato chapter of the League of Minnesota Poets to revive the custom of holding a local Eisteddfod, a Welsh literary and cultural festival with adjudicated competitions for poets, writers, musicians, and others.

The tradition, which had been brought to the Mankato area in the 1860s by early Welsh-American pioneers, had fallen into abeyance during the 1950s.

During the 2006 Cambria Eisteddfod, however, at the Morgan Creek Vineyards in New Ulm, Brainerd poet Doris Stengel was awarded the Bardic Chair by Archdruid John Calvin Rezmerski.

The League hosts an annual contest cycle,[4] and distributes cash prizes for winning poems.

In 2020 the LMP sponsored a Pandemic Penpal Poetry Project to connect poets with residents in congregate living who were cut off from visitors by quarantine requirements.