2024 OPA Adult Contest – Form Category Prose Poem – Winners
Judge’s Overall Comments:
While an old form, the prose poem has not been washed of its
controversy. Poets have long argued the merit of the prose poem as a form—even contesting if it is a form at all, or just lovely prose. On the dividing line, I am firmly on the side that prose poetry exists as its own unique form—but its familiar look hides the skill needed to ensure that it is a poem and not just lovely prose. For certainly there is such a thing as lovely prose that is not poetry. So how does one recognize the former from the latter? This is where the toolbox of the poet can be heavily tested. Line, in the traditional sense, does so much work for the poet, aiding music, imagery, meaning, and so much more. So how does one cope with the “absence” of the line? The most skilled prose poems still treat the work on the level of the line, whether it is through the use of punctuation, syntax, and diction, or through the careful curating of what words the “line” ends on. To me—one reader among many—that is the secret of the prose poem, what separates it from lovely prose: line still matters much in the same way as traditional poetry but shackled. The question is: how far can you take it even with those chains?
1st Place: Dayle Olson, "Brewer’s Blackbird"
2nd Place: Scott Dalgarno, "Small Pleasures"
3rd Place: Susan Easterly, "Zen on the Lizard"
Rana said, "Judging this contest was extremely difficult because of the many wonderful poems submitted; I want to highlight the following poems that did amazing work with music, imagery, line, and subject matter:"
1st HM: Nancy Flynn, "Thresholds of More Oblivious Blossoming"
2nd HM: Carson Lommers, "A Bird at the End of the World”
3rd HM: Brian Evans, "A Night at Fort Stevens"
And close behind (in alphabetical order)
Sarah Clark, “Vitality”
Mary Christine Delea, “Before the Ice Storm”
Joan Dobbie, “Fruit of the Holocaust”
Matthew Friday, “The Rose”
Marilyn Johnston, “Breaking News”
Severena Johnston, “Could it be”
Brian Rohr, “Inside the photo lab”
JUDGE
Rana Tahir
Rana Tahir is a poet and author living in Portland. She is of Pakistani origin and grew up in Kuwait. She earned her MFA from Pacific University. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming from Asian American Writers Workshop, Bahr Magazine, Poetry Online, West Trade Review, and Quarterly West among others. She is the author of three books, a textbook on the life and work of Harlem Renaissance poet Countee Cullen, a Choose Your Own Adventure Novel based
on the life of World War II Heroine Noor Inayat Khan, and a Choose Your Own Adventure novel based on the fourth season of the Netflix show Stranger Things.