Adult Contest Winners

Knowledge of Good and Evil by Penelope Scambly Schott   I am a way better biter than Eve or Adam. I go at apples entirely, core and seeds, leaving nothing but stem. I have built my house out of stems, and between them, a window. All these ageing years l have stared out. Eve swallowed […]

Fishing Indian Creek by Marri Champié               Across vast prairie a train slants away;             I hear it whistle at Indian Creek Bridge.   I cannot sleep for fish dreams, glittering smolt like tears on a stringer.               You stepped across pools sailed with golden leaves             each rock a metronome for years

Persephone by Carol Clark Williams   Foolish child, despite her mother’s wild-eyed searching and entreating, she was enticed into eating what she should not while the people above her starved and prayed, and Demeter moved earth and Sun to bring her daughter home.   Like Eve, who fed on fruit with cyanide seeds, she returned,

Honorable mentions: 1st Honorable Mention: “Monday after Rain” by Michael Hanner, Eugene, OR 2nd Honorable Mention: “Fourth Wave” by Linda Ferguson, Portland, OR 3rd Honorable Mention: “Spinning Song” by Toni Hanner, Eugene, OR   Judge’s comments The poets of Oregon have so much to say to the world. They see a frayed time and write

Poet’s Choice — Armin Tolentino, Judge 1st Place: “Knowledge of Good and Evil” by Penelope Scambly Schott, Portland, OR 2nd Place: “Fishing Indian Creek” by Marri Champié, Kuna, ID 3rd Place: “Persephone” by Carol Clark Williams, York, PA 1st Honorable Mention: “Monday after Rain” by Michael Hanner, Eugene, OR 2nd Honorable Mention: “Fourth Wave” by

Honorable mentions: 1st Honorable Mention: “Memorial Day” by Joanna Rose, Portland, OR 2nd Honorable Mention: “Fostering a Better World” by Jennifer Rood, Grants Pass, OR 3rd Honorable Mention: “After Midnight” by Stephanie Striffler, Portland, OR     Judge’s comments I thought a lot about meaning as I read these poems. I thought about how language

I Went to School Today   Salvador Dali was instructing, painfully, the concept of relativity. “Everything is relative to something else… this chair is relative to that corner. And the corner is relative to the clock on the wall as well as the room down that hall.” Einstein was sweeping up after the children’s lunch

Cosmonaut’s Lament   Above her head the stars, bleary in their watchfulness   Under her feet black offal, of metal tang and smoke and char   Contrails unspool like strands of hair in zero G and the cosmonaut thinks of earthbound tidepools   little pockets of life where there should be no life   Of

Disturbance Theory at HJ Andrews Experimental Forest [gview file=”https://oregonpoets.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/DisturbanceTheoryCorrected.pdf”] Judge’s comments I thought a lot about meaning as I read these poems. I thought about how language creates meaning, how humans create language, and how, despite how frail the letters words are made of, how inadequate the sounds of words are to represent the wide

Honorable mentions: 1st Honorable Mention: “Who Will Be Sent” by Laurel Benjamin, Albany, CA 2nd Honorable Mention: “A Thousand Resting Stars” by Alan Contreras, Eugene, OR 3rd Honorable Mention: “A Commanding Position in the World” by Susan Whitney, Eugene, OR   —Shaindel Beers