Marsh Hawk Press Blog

2011 MARSH HAWK PRESS POETRY PRIZE WINNERS!

We are pleased to announce the winners of our Marsh Hawk Press Poetry prize judged by Alicia Ostriker, and for which we received entrants from 15 countries:

Contest Winner:

Meredith Cole—Miniatures

Judge Alicia Ostriker has the following to say about the winning manuscript:

Reading Miniatures made my head spin; it was so perfect and puzzling at the same time. The world of these poems is like ours, but not exactly. Facts are snipped from provocative stories to make sure we don't know too much. A refrain addresses the reader: "you have never been to Japan." We are in Japan and Hawaii, among expats and locals, looking in at their relationships, their landscapes, their gardens and fields of daisies, orchids, lilies, as through the windows of a doll house. The poems are like origami--things are tucked and hidden inside, but if you unfold it you lose the beauty, the charm, the strangeness, the enjoyment of fine craftsmanship. Every poem a surprise, a mystery, a thing-in-itself, a world where pain is" the famous dewdrop hovering on a leaf,/ a man hosing a butcher shop from blood, where on a cloudy day Wet fishing nets drop in the far-off sea, and where a poem beginning Let's have a long boring talk about our relationship,/ he said on the local that sped through the foreign town/ toward a world famous hot spring made me laugh. I was charmed and mesmerized by Meredith Cole's art. You will be too.
--Alicia Ostriker, author of the Book of Seventy

Runners-Up:
Alison Jarvis, Jennifer Atkinson, Rosalynde Vas Dias and Danielle Hanson

Finalists:
Patty Seyburn, Joan I. Siegel, Frances Schenkkan, Janet Kaplan, Deborah Woodard, Katerina Stoykova-Klemer, Robin Silbergleid, Erica Dawson, Tony Trigilio (and Chris Green), Dennis Finnell, Jason Labbe, Kirstin Hotelling Zona, Jeremy Gregersen, Eric Magrane and Wendy Burk, Ori Fienberg, Daneen Wardrop, Gabriella Klein and Erin Malone.

More information at http://marshhawkpress.org!