2023 FALL ADULT CONTEST RESULTS
MEMBERS ONLY, JUDGE JERI THERIAULT
1st Place: Given Davis, “Catch and Release”
2nd Place: David A. Goodrum, “My Middle Brother Bleeding”
3rd Place: Nancy Flynn, “provenance”
1st HM: Jone Rush MacCulloch, “I Dreamt of Crows”
2nd HM: Jennifer Rood, “Shooting Star Cento”
3rd HM: Rachel Barton, “A Willamette Valley Solstice”
Judge Comments:
Dear“Members-Only” Contest Entrants,
Although it’s a real challenge to write a good twenty-line poem, many of your submitted pieces are alive with imagery and story. I also enjoyed the range of subject matter.
My process: I read the entire packet three times, making notes. From that point, it was a winnowing process, from all to half, to a third, and finally down to these six. I was looking for lyrical use of language and sound elements. Most important was how the poem worked as a whole and what happened at the end. These winners all have a “turn” or “aha” moment at the end. This “aha” is a subtle arrival that usually surprises the writer as much as the reader.
Here are the poems I chose for recognition:
“Catch & Release”
So much happens in this short poem! The egg is first a natural object which then becomes the beloved which then becomes the speaker. The poem moves like the ocean’s tides. The speaker creates a sense of separation, tossing the egg, the “you” into the ocean “to be washed away.” But a “rogue wave,” (Nature? Love?) brings the “egg” back. Finally, there’s that lovely turn at the end with “you . . .crack me open,” making the speaker the “egg.” Among a field of strong contenders, “Catch & Release” best demonstrates the power of a short poem.
“My Middle Brother Bleediing”
This is a compelling narrative with excellent use of specific details: the arm ripped “wide open and to the bone,” the “blood spurting” and the “boxy white ambulance racing away.” Then, there’s the wonderful blurriness in the middle: the injured brother walking to the house with his arm spurting blood is caught in “a vacuum where you can’t breathe and the temp / seems below zero.” A strong poem!
“provenance”
This is a musical lyric which makes good use of both title and epigraph. We readers know we’re in an Irish cemetery. We hear the ghosts “whisper” in the repeated ‘s’ sounds: gusts, dust, lost, ancestral, surplus, tossed. And the poet juxtaposes specific objects with these whispering sounds: oak leaves, bog, bodies, those “blackened famine pots,” the “limestone scree” and slate. This is a richly atmospheric poem.
“I Dreamt of Crows”
Quite an effective “golden shovel” poem, “I Dreamt of Crows” captures the complete action of choosing and skipping a stone. Some of my favorite lines: “crows settled in oak trees” and the “chorus of tree frogs.” I also like the surprise ending—a dream about the “you” (someone lost? a former lover?) “flying with crows.”
“Shooting Star Cento”
I love the concept of uniting all ten Oregon Poets Laureate in a cento! There are some lovely moments in this poem: “I am the sort of person/flinging light backward—/the wildest of all / stars tonight.” And that surprising, “I am going somewhere!”
“A Willamette Valley Solstice”
There’s such good “stuff” in this poem! The first three stanzas full of books and cloth and duty are reminders of what the speaker should be doing. And the final stanza delivers the speaker’s preferred activity–pulling weeds in the garden. That’s when the poem becomes most lyrical, with “blues drowned out by / yellow rocket and a persistent rash of volunteer calendula and poppies.”
Here are a few “reminders” and resources
Specific details strengthen a poem. Use the names of things. Create a moment. Be sparing with your adjectives, alluring as they are. Let your strong nouns and verbs carry the narrative or emotion.
Read other poets as a daily practice. Read a mix of poets, both those from bygone eras and contemporary. It’s inspiring (as is clear in the golden shovel and cento above), but it’s also a great way to learn and move deeper into your writing practice. Subscribe to “Poem-a-Day” at Poets.org. If you are able to do so, buy books by your favorite poets. Imitate them.
Innovate. This may seem at odds with the advice to imitate, but I think the two go together, whether you are trying to find your voice or you’ve gotten into a rut of writing the same kind of poem.
Sign up for NaPoWriMo https://www.napowrimo.net/ which means National Poetry Writing Month. In April you’ll get a prompt a day with samples and quirky information. There are many online communities and programs to help support your writing practice. NaPoWriMo is free and you can access it year-round—and it’s archived, so previous prompts are available to you.
Finally, here are some journals with quick turn-around times. All of these publish a variety of voices from much-published to first-timers.
The Inflectionist Review https://www.inflectionism.com/
Rogue Agent Journal http://www.rogueagentjournal.com/
Burningwood Journal https://www.burningword.com/
eunoia review https://eunoiareview.wordpress.com/
The Hole in the Head Review https://www.holeintheheadreview.com/
It has been a pleasure to read such strong work! Keep writing!
Jeri
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Catch & Release, 1st Place, Given Davis
I could not bring myself
to write your name
on a clean white egg
and deliver you to the ocean
as an offering
to be washed away
I am certain
that by the tail
of some rogue wave
the pristine thing of you
would follow me inland
and by chance
crack me open
Given Davis (they/he) is a Black queer neurodivergent nonbinary trans masculine multidisciplinary artist. Their work is an ongoing love letter to the selves we have been and a reflection of our present versions working to better understand ourselves each day, while celebrating our ongoing transformation into the people we are always already becoming. Given’s writing has been published by the Black Lesbian Literary Collective, Genre: Urban Arts, and Buckman Publishing.
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My Middle Brother Bleeding, 2nd Place, David A. Goodrum
You catch your arm on a rusted bolt atop the neighbor’s swing set,
metal threads ripping wide open and to the bone
the inside of your upper forearm. Somehow you raise yourself
and loosen the hooked flesh; dash across backyards to reach home,
blood spurting down to your wrist and hand. You forget
to keep your open wound above the heart
but vaguely remember the advice not to swing until thirty minutes
after eating and don’t try to fly on an empty stomach.
You’re so confused by astronomical facts —
you shouldn’t see other stars when the sun’s out;
remember to bring a sweater to a planetarium; heavenly bodies
are closer than they appear; and the darkening space between you
and the back door is a vacuum where you can’t breathe and the temp
seems below zero. Standing frozen on the steps, your little brother
(who, if you stopped to ask, would say Go get mom yourself!)
stares slack-jawed at the boxy white ambulance racing away
and for years at your Y-shaped scar and the dried red drops
patterned like constellations on the driveway.
David A. Goodrum, writer/photographer, lives in Corvallis, Oregon. His poems are forthcoming or have been published in Tar River Poetry, The Inflectionist Review, Passengers Journal, Cathexis Northwest Press, Willawaw Journal, Scapegoat Review, Triggerfish Critical Review, among others. Even before his early thirties, he was certain he would never write poetry brief again. He continues, it seems, to be wrong. About most things. See additional work (poetry and photography) at www.davidgoodrum.com.
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provenance, 3rd Place, Nancy Flynn
at St. Tiernan’s Cemetery, Crossmolina, County Mayo, Ireland
they suffer whisper
the wind with oak leaves trickling
a kind of dry rain
from gusts whims of dust
easily lost to the bog
ancestral voices
their surplus bodies
blanketed roughdug tossed in
blackened famine pots
hardscrabbling doubters
this glorying autumn noon
speak to me few words
relations mired by
peat sundew & limestone scree
sloping past their graves
lesser celandine
invading then reclaiming
shadow/forebears/slate
Nancy Flynn grew up on the Susquehanna River in northeastern Pennsylvania, spent many years on a downtown creek in Ithaca, New York, and now lives near the mighty Columbia in Portland, Oregon. She attended Oberlin College, Cornell University, and has an M.A. in English from SUNY/Binghamton. Her writing has received an Oregon Literary Fellowship and the James Jones First Novel Fellowship. Recent publications include the poetry collection, Every Door Recklessly Ajar. Her website is www.nancyflynn.com.
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Jeri Theriault’s awards include the 2023 Maine Arts Commission Literary Arts Fellowship, the 2023 Monson Arts Fellowship, and the 2022 NORward Prize (New Ohio Review). Her poems and reviews have appeared in The Rumpus, The Texas Review, The Atlanta Review, The Asheville Review, Plume, and many other publications. Recent collections are Radost, my red (Moon Pie Press) and In the Museum of Surrender (Encircle Publications). In 2021, she edited WAIT: Poems from the Pandemic (Littoral Books). Self-Portrait as Homestead is forthcoming from Deerbrook editions in May, 2023. Jeri lives in South Portland, Maine.