COUNTERPETITIONER’S SUPPORTING AFFIDAVIT

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“COUNTERPETITIONER’S SUPPORTING AFFIDAVIT” by Starr Davis is the 3rd place winner of the 2023 Sappho Prize for Women Poets, selected by Guest Judge Evie Shockley. We’re honored to share this poem with you.

“I can’t help but love a poem that takes the sterile discourses of law and bureaucracy and explodes them with life’s messy, but necessary excess. This poem’s language is bursting with Black vernacular riches, in the coin of pain and persistence. Our truths, even when they fit in the space provided, are never neat—but we need them, and with the kind of energy pulsing through these lines.” —Evie Shockley, Guest Judge

 

COUNTERPETITIONER’S SUPPORTING AFFIDAVIT

read PDF here.

 

Starr Davis

Starr Davis is a poet and essayist whose work has been featured in multiple literary venues such as The Kenyon Review, Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day, The Rumpus, and Catapult. She is a 2021–2022 PEN America Writing for Justice Fellow and the Creative Nonfiction Editor for TriQuarterly, and the Mama's Writing Columnist for Raising Mothers. She holds an MFA in creative writing from the City College of New York and a BA in journalism and creative writing from the University of Akron. She has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize in poetry and creative nonfiction, Best of the Net, and Best American Essays. She works as a poetry mentor and workshop facilitator for Brooklyn Poets.

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