
This year’s contest was our first as co-editors and we are pleased to announce our selections. We want to thank all participants, without whom we could not sponsor this contest. Kudos to each and every one.
From our perspective, performing the task of judgement was both arduous and rewarding. We read and re-read and, because the two of us have peripheral preferences, we sifted back and forth to arrive at firm agreements. The compensation was in our exposure to a variety of work from personal love-angst, to political assessments, from poems filled with egocentric seriousness to sly humor. There is much fine work being created across age groups, ethnic backgrounds, religious persuasions, sexual preferences and so on, though all poems were read blind!
Making choices based on only three poems per entrant is much different from judging whole manuscripts. Nonetheless just three poems, more often than not, indicate dominant content concerns of the poet, their stylistic preferences, and the breadth (or limits of) their command of our wonderful English language. We endeavored to have open minds, putting prejudices aside, to decide which poems we thought compelling.
We are happy to announce the first prize is awarded to Susan Muse for Renegade, the second prize to Charlotte Rea for Elegy to a Young Copperhead, and third prize to Wendy Jean MacLean for Beehive Hut Near Dingle.
We also want to recognize six poems which earned our attention and respect:
Ray’s Fig Trees by Dereck Kannemeyer
Visiting My Mother After Her Layoff by Erik Wilbur
Yogurt with Honey by Ion Corcos
History Lesson by Susan Muse
Out of Range by Patricia Hemminger
Hello Icarus by Gary Beaumier.
The three winning poems and finalists poems will be published in Streetlight Magazine in the Spring issue.
—Sharon Ackerman and Fred Wilbur, co-editors



Share this post with your friends.


