2024 OPA Adult Contest – Oregon Poets Choice Category – Winners
Judge’s Overall Comments:
The Poet’s Choice selection was a cross-section of the best of contemporary American poetry—free verse, formal verse, special forms such as the Golden Shovel and Abecedarian, poems of memory, nature poems, ecopoems, spiritual poems, political poems, humorous poems, including limericks, and more. It’s an honor to read everyone’s words. I truly believe that all our poems make a difference in the world by contributing beauty, teaching compassion, giving voice to those who can’t find the words, and making us all feel more connected to one another. That’s why judging is such an impossible task. And yet, I take it on because I truly enjoy discovering the multitude of voices that exist, all the realms of possibility I can. My criteria for selecting six poems from this generous assortment was simple—that I fall in love. And honestly, I fell in love many times over. So, my next criteria was poems that kept drawing me back in to read again and again. In truth, any of the entered poems could have been among the top six. As a wildly imperfect human, I come to the poems as a reader with my own history and predilections, with recent events and future aspirations. And every day, I am a slightly different me who might fall harder for one poem than another. So please excuse my changeability and fallibility and know that I celebrate each and every one of the poets who sent in work for making these wonderful poems and for sharing them with others. Congratulations to all for your writing and for your generosity!
1st Place: Connie Soper, "Chiaroscuro"
2nd Place: Shawn Aveningo-Sanders, "Your Rescue"
3rd Place: Linda Drach, "Three Days on Cloud Mountain"
1st HM: Louhi Pohjola, "At the Pond Drop Prom"
2nd HM: Colette Tennant, "Trying to Remember What I Never Knew about My Grandmother"
3rd HM: Marvin Lurie, "Singularity"
JUDGE
Lana Hechtman Ayers
Lana Hechtman Ayers, MFA, has shepherded over a hundred poetry volumes into print in her role as managing editor for three small presses. Her work appears in such places as Escape Into Life, Rattle, The London Reader, Peregrine, and The MacGuffin. She lives with her husband and several fur babies on the Oregon coast in a town known for its barking sea lions. Her favorite color is the swirl of van Gogh’s The Starry Night. Visit her online at LanaAyers.com.