Contest Judge: Annie Finch (www.anniefinch.com)
Annie Finch is the author or editor of fifteen books of poetry, translation, and criticism. Her books of poetry include Eve, Calendars (just released in a new edition with 40-page downloadable Readers' Companion and Audio CD), The Encyclopedia of Scotland, and Among the Goddesses: An Epic Libretto in Seven Dreams. Her poetry appears in anthologies, textbooks and journals including Agni, Fulcrum, Kenyon Review, The Norton Anthology of World Poetry, Paris Review, The Penguin Book of the Sonnet, Prairie Schooner, and Yale Review. Her other works include several influential books of poetics, most recently The Body of Poetry and A Poet's Ear, and numerous music, art, theater, and opera collaborations. Finch's book of poetry Calendars was shortlisted for the Foreword Poetry Book of the Year Award and in 2009 she was awarded the Robert Fitzgerald Award. She holds degrees from Yale University, the University of Houston, and Stanford University, and currently directs the Stonecoast MFA program in creative writing at the University of Southern Maine.
Winner: "New Skin" by Elizabeth Thompson
(poem is below)
"New Skin" was chosen as the winning poem because of its musical, precise, subtle language, fresh metaphors, and mysterious vision. It was also the only plantain poem! I enjoyed all the poems, and was especially charmed, moved, or delighted by those receiving Honorable Mention. Thanks to everyone who sent poems! Green Blessings, Annie Finch
Honorable Mentions:
"Gardener's Reverie" by Domenica Cipolione
"Blue" by Lisa Valantine
"Red Clover's Promise" by Nita Campbell
"Daring Dandelions" by Vivienne Whale Grace
"Honeysuckle" by Victoria Green
"The WIld Weeds in My Wee Garden" by Julie Allshouse
New Skin
Where you find your wounds, you find your healer,
I tell her. Beneath twined honeysuckle vine, clothesline,
Stop sign, lawn, median, and meadow, we pick palmfuls
Of sinewy, slick leaves, veins trailing like kite tails,
And chew them to a paste to plaster on her dog
Bitten face.
In the moonlight of her first owl-owned night,
Her small body glistened like maize, unbroken and bright.
Outside foxes leapt the woodpile, coyotes howled,
Paws pressed in pitch and rabbit-nipped plantain,
And coons found baby Bantams and tore them
Like peaches.
When the sun broke the slate of that night, the apple
Blossoms burst towards the new skin of dawn.
She smiles and the dried plantain paste cracks and flakes
Like seaweed revealing crimson flesh. We renew the poultice.
Finding plantain scattered like petals in the grass, we crush,
Plaster, affirm.
By: Elizabeth Thompson
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