Award-Winning Poems 2005
Winter 2005-2006
BEYOND FLUORESCENCE
by Julianne Buchsbaum
Winner of the 2004 Del Sol Press Poetry Prize
Postmark Deadline: January 15
This open manuscript contest from a prestigious independent press offers $1,500 and publication. Buchsbaum's poem evokes the sinister wildness that is closer than we think, where "slag glows on the outskirts of town" and the city in winter is just one power failure away from the twilight of the gods. Yet the collapse of these structures also offers the hope of liberation and a less exploitative relationship to the earth. This poem is selected from her prizewinning book A Little Night Comes.
HOW I FOUGHT THE SEVEN-HEADED BEAST OF CAPITALISM and other poems
by Jay Griswold
Winner of Main Street Rag's Annual Poetry Book Award for 2005
Postmark Deadline: January 31
This open manuscript contest from a politically engaged, high-quality small press offers $1,000 and 50 books; see interview with MSR publisher M. Scott Douglass in this issue. Griswold's narrative of a quixotic struggle against corporate greed is tinged with self-mockery. Perhaps the template for countercultural rebellion is one more manufactured product of capitalism, defusing the energy of protest into inauthentic and futile gestures? This poem is selected from his prizewinning book Conquistador.
Fall 2005
UNRELENTING
by Joan Houlihan
Winner of the 2005 Green Rose Prize in Poetry
Postmark Deadline: September 30
The Green Rose Prize is a prestigious manuscript contest from New Issues for a second book of poetry. Houlihan's characteristically compressed syntax creates poems that strain beneath the weight of unbearable truths, mortality chief among them. Her prizewinning book Cincture will be published in 2006. Her first collection of poetry and criticism, Hand-Held Executions, is available now.
ON TALLASSEEHATCHEE CREEK
by Jake Adam York
Winner of the 2005 Elixir Poetry Book Award
Postmark Deadline: October 31
Elixir's manuscript contest publishes two high-quality books per year. Jake York delivers a powerful elegy for a Native American village incinerated by President Andrew Jackson's soldiers. York's prizewinning first book Murder Ballads will be published this fall. This poem was first published in Blackbird.
CHOIR
by Jeff Hardin
Winner of the 2004 Frederick Morgan Poetry Prize
Postmark Deadline: October 31
This first-book contest, formerly known as the Nicholas Roerich Poetry Prize, offers $1,000 and publication. The effortless flow of Hardin's sonnet mirrors the theme of the poem, the glimpse of self-transcendence experienced by singers in a chorus. "Hearing song, one wonders why we bother/ with the lie of self, its insistent claw/ for glory, ache for spark, which never calms". Hardin's prizewinning book Fall Sanctuary is available at Amazon.
PASSOVER
by Mary Rose O'Reilley
Winner of the 2005 Walt Whitman Award
Postmark Deadline: November 15
This is a prestigious first-book prize sponsored by the Academy of American Poets. O'Reilley's daring poem looks to nature's self-renewing cycles to redeem the memory of human atrocities such as the Holocaust. "[W]hat is terrible, even, rises." Her prizewinning book Half Wild is forthcoming from Louisiana State University Press in 2006.
Summer 2005
TERROIR
by Shanna Compton
Winner of the 2004 Winnow Press Open Book Award in Poetry
Postmark Deadline: July 14 (manuscript)
Playful but with a critical bite, this poem from Compton's prizewinning book Down Spooky revels in fantasies of objects to be acquired ("Garage nextdoor contains clutter/more interesting than our own"), yet warns that our consumerist dreams have become more real to us than the actual life we live. The sponsor of this manuscript prize is Winnow Press, a high-quality independent press.
BLUE MOUND TO 161
by Garin Cycholl
Winner of the 2003 Transcontinental Poetry Award
Postmark Deadline: August 15 (manuscript)
Stream-of-consciousness American travelogue from Cycholl's prizewinning book Blue Mound juxtaposes voices from official documents, legends and natural history alongside the sounds of the modern highway. This first-book prize is sponsored by Pavement Saw Press, a notable independent publisher with a quirky experimental sensibility.
APRIL SONG FOR AUGUST
by Adrian Blevins
Winner of the 2004 Kate Tufts Discovery Award
Postmark Deadline: September 15 (first published book)
This delightful selection from Blevins' prizewinning book The Brass Girl Brouhaha bubbles over with musical wordplay in celebration of spring and the children who are young and fearless enough to take it for granted. This prestigious prize honors a first book of poetry by a US author. The winner receives $10,000.
CHARLIE BUTTERWORTH IS IN MY SOUL
by Dana Roeser
Winner of the 2004 Samuel French Morse Poetry Prize
Postmark Deadline: September 15 (manuscript)
Tragicomic commentary on snobbery, in which the shabbiness of poverty is redeemed, if not beautified, by generosity of spirit. Roeser's prizewinning book Beautiful Motion was published last year by Northeastern University Press. This high-profile prize honors a manuscript by a US poet who has published no more than one book.
Spring 2005
SURVIVOR
by Vijay Seshadri
Winner of the 2003 James Laughlin Award
Postmark Deadline: May 15 (honors a second book under contract to a publisher)
Acerbic little poem takes an unflinching look at survivors' guilt from a new perspective. Selected from Seshadri's prizewinning collection The Long Meadow, available from Graywolf Press.
DELIVERANCE and other poems
by G.C. Waldrep
Winner of the 2003 Colorado Prize for Poetry
Postmark Deadline: January 15
Colorado State University sponsors a prestigious manuscript contest. Waldrep's richly textured poems cast a critical eye on art's tools and trickeries. Selection includes the title poem from the prizewinning collection Goldbeater's Skin.
