Search results: “theodicy”

Theodicy

By

“Theodicy” by Grace MacNair is the winning poem for the 2022 Emerging Poet Prize, selected by Safia Elhillo. We’re honored to share this urgent poem as well as an interview with Grace about her work both on the page and beyond it.

I’ve heard many times throughout my life that a good ending should feel both inevitable and truly surprising, and I maybe never fully understood that until reading this poem. It covers so much ground but with such stunning economy. I loved and trusted the unadorned language, which makes me think of Baldwin talking about writing a sentence “clean as a bone.” The vividness of the images was emphasized for me by the straightforwardness of the diction, and the effect was like having this poem injected directly into my heart.  —Safia Elhillo, guest judge


 

Yesterday I overheard a woman speak of Mary,
specifically her eyes, always cast up
toward the angel or down toward the baby,

how she never looks at you straight —
a posture I’ve assumed myself,
a posture I’m trained to watch for.

About our bodies, strangers in white
deliver the news; in some places, the only option
is the option Mary had.

And Eve? She didn’t ask for death,
only knowledge, but death is what god gave her
and what he gave his son.

Last week I stood in front of Alice Neel’s Well Baby Clinic.
Grotesque mothers juggle infants, metal beds askew.
Clad in white, a nurse towers over a woman with bloodied nipples.

A doctor holds what looks like a diaphragm in his skeletal hands.
On Neel’s lap, a ghostly alien. When people would mewl over little kids,
I just wanted to paint them. I should have had some birth control thing.

Neel had a nervous breakdown, attempted suicide by eating glass.
Once I wrote out the Lord’s prayer, added an r to father.
Farther. God as distance makes sense.

Distance can describe space, time,
disposition — realms in which violence lives
concrete, unseen, inextricable.

Years ago I watched a woman who’d impaled herself
with a sharpened stick collapse to the hospital floor.
Two days on an oxcart. Hysterectomy.

Blood poisoning. She lived but barely.
Years later, an American senator speaks on rape:

The female body has ways to shut that whole thing down.


 

Interview with Grace MacNair

by AT Hincapie 

 

AH: Part ekphrasis and part criticism, your winning poem “Theodicy” makes direct reference to Alice Neel’s Well Baby Clinic, where “grotesque mothers juggle infants, metal beds askew.” How do you see this homage to visual art informing the written word, or how might this kind of ekphrastic voice give context and clarity to your own observations?

GM: The materiality of visual art helps me discover language, clarify emotion, and explore my subconscious. “Theodicy” is my attempt to tell the truth about what Neel and so many others experienced, and what I’ve seen and experienced in both my personal and professional life in support of reproductive health. Lucille Clifton spoke to the importance of this when she wrote “…poetry teaches us that everything is connected…There is so much history that we have not validated.”

A therapist once theorized that the severe insomnia I suffered until about two years ago was a symptom of my inability to express anger. When I first stood in front of Well Baby Clinic I was overcome by a sense of rage and claustrophobia. In “Killing Plato,” the poet Chantal Maillard (translated by Yvette Siegert) said that she writes “because someone forgot to scream/and now a white space/exists inside of them.” This white space haunts me – it is an absence created by rage, and from what I know of Neel I think it haunted her too. Well Baby Clinic vehemently rejects its placid title and portrays a disturbing power dynamic. A white-clad nurse expertly holds the only calm baby in the room, a moment of quiet disquiet amidst the clinic’s chaos, while a doctor with well-defined features balances a cervical cap* on his skeletal fingers just out of reach of a woman with a vandalized face and bloody nipples.

This power imbalance is a recurring theme in my poetry and in reproductive and child health. Between 1927 and 1928 when Well Baby Clinic was painted, Neel was living in relative poverty and receiving healthcare from free/low-cost, desegregated clinics. These clinics disproportionately subjected Black women to invasive and humiliating STI tests before providing them with care. Neel herself was screened for syphilis via an excruciating and debilitating spinal tap. In 1927, Neel lost her first child to diphtheria, which by that time mostly affected people who lived in under-resourced conditions. Well Baby Clinic sharpens all this history to a point. To write successful ekphrasis, Mark Doty says that writers must “see beyond the art and say what it means to them…take us into the work in a way we don’t expect.” Neel’s work helped me to describe a white space inside me that was in need of language, especially in light of current events.

*correction: in my poem, I described the cervical cap as a “diaphragm.” This is a mistake and an anachronism. Diaphragms were not invented until the 1940s!

 

AH: Similar to descriptions of Alice Neel’s painting, this poem also emphasizes religious iconography through visuals of Mary and Eve, and even reworkings of language in the Lord’s Prayer, where “God as distance makes sense.” What relationship do you find between faith and healthcare, and how might these images and traditions influence the speaker’s mindset in this poem?

GM: Religious iconography and references make their way into the poem by way of my upbringing in a rural, evangelical Christian household with limited access to education. As a child, I was obsessed with how a perfectly good and omniscient God could coexist with evil. When I was nineteen and living on a commune in Switzerland, I began studying theodicies that attempt to explain this question. For example, Julian of Norwich, a medieval anchoress and mystic, proposed that the ecstasy of the second coming would be felt when God finally explained what the fuck he was thinking. The line “God as distance makes sense” is me time traveling back to my younger self who once agonized over Christianity’s gaps in logic. Prior to becoming an atheist, I’d begun to believe that God must only exist in absentia. 

At this particular moment in history, the relationship I see between faith and healthcare is highly fraught. Despite many notable exceptions, there’s no denying that Christianity used and still uses healthcare as a will to power and a form of biopolitical control. One needs to look no further than colonial medicine, missionaries, and government reliance on religious charity to supplement an inadequate health care system. America’s war on reproductive health is built on decades-long campaigns by Christian nationalists to gain legislative, judicial, and political power. This effort extends globally. In 2019, the Trump administration blocked Title X funds from reaching domestic and global clinics that provided abortion information. The woman in my poem who nearly died of a botched abortion lived in Malawi, which retains one of the most restrictive abortion laws in all of Africa: a 1930 penal code that criminalizes anyone who has an abortion, unless their life is at stake, with 7-14 years in prison. It’s worth noting that the British brought Christianity to Malawi in the 1880s, and that Malawi did not achieve independence until 1964. In 2021, Malawi’s parliament withdrew an abortion bill that would have legalized abortion in cases of rape and incest. A Catholic group that opposed the bill with donated funds from the US claimed victory. 

America’s pro-life movement continues to rely on bad science and specious theodicies (“God uses evil for good,” etc.) to force people to carry unwanted/unsafe/nonviable pregnancies to term. I recently learned that in 1994 Joe Biden wrote: “Please don’t force me to pay for abortions against my conscience.” By “conscience,” he meant Catholicism. I know my answer to your question must make me seem anti-religion, but I’m not. I find many aspects of religion to be edifying and profoundly consoling, but like anything powerful, it can be unpredictable and dangerous. 

 

AH: A recurring theme here comes from measuring and observing time across generations and across disciplines–from religious, artistic, medical, and even political perspectives when “Years later, an American senator speaks…” Can you speak to your perspective of the progress that humans have made over the thousands of years that are traced in this poem? Is it possible that our generation could hope to achieve what our mothers have worked toward?

GM: I wish the poem traced progress, but I’m not sure it does. If anything, it highlights centuries of various countries, powers, and cultures failing to provide people with bodily/reproductive autonomy. The comment that ends the poem was made in 2012 by former Senator Todd Akin. Prior to Akin, several Republican politicians made similar claims. James Leon Holmes, a former federal judge in Arkansas, claimed that “Concern for rape victims is a red herring because conceptions from rape occur with approximately the same frequency as snowfall in Miami.” Stephen Freind, former Pennsylvania State Representative, said that “when a traumatic experience is undergone, a woman secretes a certain secretion which has a tendency to kill the sperm.” These arguments are reminiscent of the medieval theory that conception was only possible if orgasm was achieved, and since a physiological pleasure response was (incorrectly) assumed to be impossible during an assault, pregnancy invalidated rape. 

I’m grateful to be surrounded by people who are fighting the good fight, committed to recognizing and unlearning patterns of harm, and helping me recognize these patterns in my own life. But truthfully, I don’t know where our generation is headed. In healthcare, I regularly deal with men who are intent on exerting control over the bodies of their partners and their children. Many of these men identify as feminists. I think the power that reproductive bodies manifest—especially before, during, and after birth, and while nourishing another human through bodyfeeding or other acts of care—triggers many men to act in insidious ways even if they claim to know better. Meanwhile, our country is being run aground by people who blatantly oppose science, the environment, and basic human rights. It’s bleak. I hope we can achieve a future in which survival is possible. 

 

AH: Maybe the answer to this problem comes in service to others, which is something that has become an important part of your life and career. How has your work as a teacher and health care professional been influential to your writing?

GM: While I’m deeply passionate about healthcare and the opportunities for direct action it provides, writing poetry is how I cope with the world and find joy. Teaching inspires and deepens my work as both a poet and healthcare professional. Nothing is more fulfilling than learning alongside others, whether I’m teaching poetry, clinical skills, or mentoring practitioners in my field. Again and again, teachers have appeared in my life at just the right moment. Their wisdom, guidance, and kindness have sustained me. “Theodicy” belongs to a body of work that’s grounded in my study of women’s contemporary and historical experiences as medical practitioners and medical subjects. The poems are meant to teach, incite, and viscerally disturb the reader in the same ways my work in healthcare teaches, incites, and viscerally disturbs me. 

 

AH: In regard to sources of inspiration, how has your work in translation influenced your personal writing, perhaps from your time with the Bread Loaf Translators’ Conference?

GM: Right now I’m working on two projects involving forms of translation. The first project draws on the lives and archives of midwives who lived between the 4th-century BCE and the 20th-century. Although I’m not literally translating their work, I am writing poems that draw on the records they left behind. I’m currently at work on a book-length poem called “I Tarried All Night.” The poem is an episodic, fictionalized retelling of the life of an 18th-century midwife named Martha Moore Ballard whose uncommon literacy allowed her to keep a consistent yet cryptic diary from 1785 to 1812. 

The second project is an unconventional translation of poems by the 20th-century Russian poet Marina Tsvetaeva. I’m not the least bit proficient in Russian, and the project strays very far from literary translation. I went to the Bread Loaf Translators’ Conference with some trepidation about whether or not my project was permissible. To my relief and delight, many people were having rich and generous discussions about unconventional approaches to translation. I’m grateful to Madhu Kaza who introduced the term “transcreation” in her lecture. According to Madhu, “transcreation” is an Indian term that describes an approach to translation that “is not extremely concerned with accuracy and fidelity” to the original text. I now use this term to describe my translations of Tsvetaeva’s work. Tsvetaeva was openly queer, intensely passionate, and politically complex. My poems investigate her fraught relationship to caretaking and motherhood and her drive to prioritize poetry above everything else. Of translation, Tsvetaeva wrote: “I tried to translate, but decided—why should I get in my own way? …The result was I rewrote it.”

The Bread Loaf Translators’ Conference was everything I hoped it would be and more. I love reading work in translation—it’s how I’ve discovered many of my favorite authors, and I find it to be one of the best ways to jump-start my own writing. Spending time with and learning from professional literary translators was a dream come true. 

 


Grace MacNair

2022 Emerging Poet Prize: Winners & Finalists

By

We are delighted to share the winners, finalists, and longlist for the 2022 Emerging Poet Prize! Please help us congratulate these up and coming poets. Deep gratitude to all who shared moving poems with us—we are so lucky to have been immersed in the worlds of your work. The winning poems were selected by Safia Elhillo and will be published next week. 


Winners of the 2022 Emerging Poet Prize

1st place — Grace MacNair for “Theodicy”

Grace MacNair is a poet and healthcare professional living in Brooklyn, NY. She has received support from Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, Bread Loaf Translators’ Conference, Brooklyn Poets, Hunter College, and Monson Arts Residency and Fellowship. She was selected by Yona Harvey as the winner of Radar Poetry’s 2021 Coniston Prize. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The Threepenny Review, Radar Poetry, Palette Poetry, and elsewhere.

2nd place — Liala Zaray for “CNN’s correspondent thinks afghani means Afghan”

Liala Zaray is a Pushcart prize nominated MFA candidate at St. Mary’s College. Her work has been featured or is forthcoming in Tinderbox, Smartish Pace, Orion & The Journal. You can find her on Twitter through the username @liala_af.

3rd place — Gabriel Cortez for “I just wanted to see what it would do when I say—”

Gabriel Cortez is a Black biracial poet, educator, and organizer of Panamanian descent. His work has appeared in the New York Times, National Public Radio, Huffington Post, The Rumpus, and The Breakbeat Poets Anthology Volume 4. He is a VONA fellow, #BARS workshop alum, NALAC grant recipient, and winner of the Judith Lee Stronach Baccalaureate Prize. Gabriel is a member of the artist collective Ghostlines, and co-founder of The Root Slam, an award-winning poetry venue dedicated to inclusivity, justice, and artistic growth, as well as Write Home, a project working to challenge public perceptions of houselessness and shift critical resources to houseless Bay Area youth through spoken word poetry. Gabriel works as Director of Programs at Youth Speaks, one of the world’s leading presenters of spoken word performance, education, and youth development programs.

Finalists

Arwa Alsamarae

Nina Boals

Micah Dela Cueva

Monica Romo

Noel Quiñones

Sara Rivera

Winniebell Xinyu Zong

 

Longlist

Rabih Ahmed

Melissa Anderson

Gauri Awasthi

Rachel Betesh

Alecia Beymer

Claire Champommier

Zachariah Claypole White

Autumn Cooper

Imani Davis

Lexi De Primo

Rebecca Faulkner

Julie Feng

Natalia Figueroa Barroso

Amber Flame

Frida Garcia-Berriochoa

Jeanne Genis

Courtney Huse Wika

Obasiota Ibe

Gabriela Igloria

Elizabeth Johnston Ambrose

Laura Joyce-Hubbard

Megan KIco Kellner

Molly Lanzarotta

Ibe Liebenberg

Maja Lukic

Laila Malik

Carling McManus

Aparna Mitra

Kimberly Nguyen

kiki nicole

Theta Pavis

Carlos A. Pittella

McKenna Ritter

Salwa Sadek

Rome Smaoui

Eden Julia Sugay

D’Mani Thomas

Othuke Umukoro

Sarah  Warren

Jamie  Wendt

Samuel Wood

 

Contests & Awards

Find the results of previous Palette Poetry contests here.

Please visit this page to find the guidelines for our current contest.


The 2024 Sappho Prize

Contest closed on June 16, 2024.

WINNER — Rebecca Hawkes, “PHYLLODES REVERIES

1st Runner-up — JC Andrews, “Gargoyle

2nd Runner-up — Mirande Bissell, “Master of the Female Half-Lengths

Finalists Finola Cahill, Julia Hori, Anne Haven McDonnell, Kristen Mears, Monae Murillo, Bleah Patterson, and Allison Tervo

In celebration of the spirit of Sappho, we're seeking new work from cis and trans women poets. Palette Poetry is committed to creating an inclusive and uplifting journal that amplifies women’s voices and experiences.

Winners selected by Megan Fernandes.


The 2024 Love & Eros Prize

Contest closed on April 7, 2024.

WINNER — Kimberly Reyes, "claiming to know the tense in which love happens"

1st Runner-up — Desirée Alvarez, “Bedroom at the End of the World

2nd Runner-up — Judith Sornberger, “After Making Love at 6AM, I Leave You in My Bed

Finalists Shrien Alshabasy, Valentina Gnup, Skye Jackson, Harriet Lamb, Carling McManus, K.R. Morrison, and Ren Wilding

Love engulfs us, desire rules us. We encourage love poems beyond the confines of what’s traditionally “romantic.” Rather, we’re seeking unflinching examinations of our sharpest human sensations—those of desire, longing, devotion, and intimacy. All iterations of love are welcome—send us your bitter and your sweet, your queer, platonic, reverent, and devotional.

Winners selected by John Lee Clark.


The 2024 Previously Published Prize

Contest closed on January 15, 2024.

WINNER — Nicole Wan-Ting Lee, “Deluge: A Chinese Almanac”

1st Runner-up — Sa Whitley, “Prayer Circle”

2nd Runner-up — Weijia Pan, “The Peasantry”

Finalists Rebecca Evans, Karina Guardiola-Lopez, Jane Herschlag, Milica Mijatovic, Ari Mokdad, Remi Recchia, and Robert Schultz

The literary landscape is abundant with presses and magazines with the advent of digital publication—so many good poems have been circulated and celebrated, but others have been forgotten, overlooked, and deserve a renewed life. We want to spotlight the poems that you love and have previously published, but feel are no longer receiving the attention or recognition they merit.

Winners selected by the Editors.

 


The 2023 Resistance & Resilience Prize

Contest closed on October 15, 2023.

WINNER — Bazeed, "kh like khummus"

1st Runner-up — Maurya Kerr, "Banjo Be"

2nd Runner-up — Christopher Watson, "Sharper Than"

Finalists — Tenny Liu, Amir Mclam, Sabrina Spence, Andrew Garvin, Fred Schmalz and Susy Bielak, and Kathryn Ugoretz

For this contest, we are especially interested in reading poems that reflect upon, live within, wrestle with, uplift, or subvert themes of resistance and resilience. We are looking for poetry of pushback and of survival, poetry that troubles power and poetry that nurtures its readers and writers alike.

Winners selected by Natasha Rao.

 


The 2023 Grisly & Grotesque Challenge

Contest closed on October 31, 2023.

WINNER — Stephanie Saywell, "Caravaggio Fever Dream"

Finalists — Laura Bandy, Ziyi Yan, Dustin King, Ja'net Danielo, Em Bober, Steven Wright, Emily Ellis, Quinn King, Syd Shaw, Anna Quercia-Thomas, Cassandra Myers, and Zachariah Claypole White

For the Grisly & Grotesque Challenge, we seek poems that recast the familiar in strange, moving, and uncanny ways.

Winners selected by the Editors.

 


The 2023 Chapbook Prize

Contest closed on August 20, 2023.

WINNER — Ava ChenHabitual Prayer (coming late 2024)

Runner-up — Dujie Tahat, AM I NOT OF THE SAME CUT STONE

Finalists —

Post-Traumatic by Beatrice Lazarus

A MIRROR OF BURNING PANTHERS by Clif Mason

micro.climates by David Maduli

Grass Widow by Kathie Collins

Hindsight by Mack Rogers

Family Geography by Maggie Wolff

Tan’s Donuts by Maya Cheav

Aubade with Factory and Rain by Tatiana Gómez

 

Winners selected by Danez Smith.

 


The 2023 Sappho Prize

Contest closed on June 15, 2023.

1st — Para Vadhahong, "Learning English in the Margins of the Masters"

2nd — Lizabeth Yandel, "Confessional"

3rd — Starr Davis, "COUNTERPETITIONER'S SUPPORTING AFFIDAVIT"

For emerging poets, this contest only accepts submissions from poets who have not yet published a full-length collection at the time of submission.

Winners selected by Evie Shockley.

 


The 2023 Rising Poet Prize

Contest closed on April 16, 2023.

1st — Logan Klutse, "Sidewalk"

3rd  Mia Kang, "Tony Reflects on Form"

For emerging poets, this contest only accepts submissions from poets who have not yet published a full-length collection at the time of submission. The winning poet is awarded $3000 and publication with Palette Poetry. Second and third place receive $300 & $200 respectively, as well as publication.

Winners selected by Maggie Smith.

 


The 2023 Ekphrastic Challenge

Contest closed on January 31, 2023.

1st — Kate Sweeney, "Lovers"

Finalist — Carling McManus, “Closed Circuit" (accepted elsewhere)

Finalist — Kiyoko Reidy, “My Brother As Anonymous Bather

For our one-week-only Ekphrastic Challenge, we invited poetry submissions that are ekphrastic in some way, that engage dynamically with a work of art, music, film, etc... One winning poet received $500 and publication, and finalists were also considered for publication. 

Winner selected by Palette editors.

 


The 2023 Previously Published Poem Prize

Contest closed on January 15, 2023.

1st — Tariq Thompson, "ON OUR BIRTHDAY, LORRAINE HANSBERRY & I DISCUSS SUNLIGHT"

2nd — Dāshaun Washington, “A Fairy Tale of Blackboyhood

3rd — Tiana Clark, “Scorched Earth

So many great poems have been circulated and celebrated, but others have been forgotten, overlooked, and deserve a new life. This prize is to shine a light upon the poems you've published elsewhere and love, but feel are no longer receiving the attention or recognition they merit.

Winners selected by Palette editors.

 


The 2022 Love & Eros Prize

Contest closed on October 16, 2022.

1st — AE Hines, "Security Deposit"

2nd — Shannan Mann, “Versions of the Undefinable Other

3rd — Caroline New, “Elk Lake, MI

Love engulfs us, desire rules us. For this contest, we encourage love poems beyond the confines of what’s traditionally “romantic.” Rather, we’re seeking unflinching examinations of our sharpest human sensations—those of desire, longing, devotion, and intimacy. All iterations of love are welcome—send us your bitter and your sweet, your queer, platonic, reverent, and devotional.

Winners selected by Carl Phillips.

 


The 2022 Chapbook Prize

Contest closed on August 25, 2022.

Winner: Joshua Aiken—to be in & of.

We’re delighted to launch the inaugural Palette Chapbook Prize— $2000 award, 50 physical copies, and digital publication! Poetry chapbook manuscripts of all styles are welcome—we have no theme or aesthetic preference. 

Winner selected by Chen Chen.


The 2022 Sappho Prize

Contest closed on June 19, 2022.

1st — Mónica Gomery, "Occupational Hazards"

2nd — Jennifer Harrison, “The Oldest Forest

3rd — Kendall Grady, “Untitled

We're honored to be able to create space for women* poets to step forward. Thanks to the efforts of the VIDA project and others, we've made a lot of progress in the past few years, but much work is still to be done. This contest only accepts submissions from women* poets.

Winners selected by Jos Charles.

 


The 2022 Emerging Poet Prize

Contest closed on April 17, 2022.

1st — Grace MacNair, "Theodicy"

2nd — Liala Zaray, “CNN’s correspondent thinks afghani means Afghan

3rd — Gabriel Cortez, “I just wanted to see what it would do when I say—

Meant for emerging poets, this contest only accepts submissions from poets with no more than one full-length collection out at the time of submission.

Winners selected by Safia Elhillo.

 


The 2022 Previously Published Poem Prize

Contest closed on January 16, 2022.

1st — K. Iver, "Who Is This Grief For?"

2nd — Shakthi Shrima, “Self Portrait in Lust“

3rd — Sneha Subramanian Kanta, “Partition Homes”

Winners selected by Palette editors.

 


The 2021 Love & Eros Prize

Contest closed on October 18, 2021.

1st — Emily Lawson, "Sand Flats, UT"

2nd — Maria Nazos, "The Hollywood Glacier"

3rd — Rachel Abramowitz, "Restoration"

Winners selected by Kaveh Akbar.

 


The 2021 Palette Poetry Prize

Contest closed on August 16, 2021.

1st — Katie Hale, "The Gallery of America"

2nd — Claire Wahmanholm, "A"

3rd — Len Lawson, "Hypotenuse"

Winners selected by Jericho Brown.

 


The 2021 Sappho Prize

Contest closed on June 20, 2021.

1st — Emily Zogbi, "Lost Things" 

2nd —Sophia Anfinn Tonnessen, "Layaway"

3rd — Yi Wei, "Look"

Winners selected by Maggie Smith.

 


The 2021 Emerging Poet Prize

Contest closed on April 19, 2021.

1st — Crystal Valentine, "Black Madonna"

2nd — Christine Poreba, "Slipped Stitches"

3rd — Serrina Zou, "The Present of Poetry"

Winners selected by Kelli Russell Agodon.

 


The 2021 Previously Published Poem Prize

Contest closed on January 17, 2021.

1st — Diane Kerr, "The Distinguished Thing: A Colloquy"

2nd — Darius Simpson, “If I’m Caught Between a Badge and a Hard Place Three Hours After the Streetlights Turn On"

3rd — Catherine-Esther Cowie, “Aftermath”

Winners selected by Palette editors.

 


The 2020 Palette Poetry Prize

Contest closed on August 16, 2020.

1st — Teresa Dzieglewicz, "There are no police in this poem"

2nd —Matthew Minicucci, "(grapes)"

3rd — Kathleen Winter, "The Sheep and the Lambs" 

Winners selected by guest judge, Forrest Gander.

 


The 2020 Sappho Prize

Contest closed on June 14, 2020.

1st — Faylita Hicks, "I Tried Dating Again–Like the Doctor Said–But I Don’t Think I’m Ready #2020"

2nd — Withdrawn by winner

3rd — Natasha Rao, "Abecedarian on Shame"

Winners selected by guest judge, Victoria Chang.


The 2020 Emerging Poet Prize

Contest closed on April 19, 2020.

1st — A.D. Lauren-Abunassar, “The Immigration Pastoral”

2nd — Mikko Harvey, “Let the World Have You” 

3rd — Akosua Zimba Afiriyie-Hwedie, “Provenance” 

The winners were selected by our guest judge, Ilya Kaminsky.


The 2019 Previously Published Poem Prize

Contest closed on October 15, 2019.

1st — Nicole Rollender, "The Luster of Everything I’m Already Forgetting” (originally published in Gigantic Sequins)

2nd — Leila Chatti, “What Will Happen” (originally published in Indiana Review)

3rd — Isabella DeSendi, “America’s First Female Muslim Judge Found Floating in a River” (originally published in Narrative)


The 2019 Emerging Poet Prize

Contest closed on August 15, 2019.

1st — Cassandra Bruner, “After Frida Kahlo’s Sin Esperanza & the Crohn’s Diagnosis”

2nd — Randy James, “Sauce on the Side”

3rd — Jesús I. Valles, “Mexican Standard About a Desert”

 

The winners were selected by our guest judge, Kim Addonizio.


The 2019 Palette Poetry Prize

 

1st — Shelley Stenhouse, "The Great Cosmic Hum"

2nd — Alycia Pirmohamed, "House of Prayer"

3rd — Madhur Anand, BRAIN HEMORRHAGE, EARLY FALL 

 

The winners were selected by our guest judge, Edward Hirsch.


The 2019 Spotlight Award

 

1st — Gbenga Adesina, “Surrender”

2nd — Antonio Lopez, “Aullo” 

3rd — Miranda Beeson, “There’s a Rattle, Sometimes” 

Honorable Mention — Francisco Marquez, “I’m not one of those who left my land”


The 2018 Emerging Poet Prize

 

1st — Victoria Flanagan, “In Response to My Mother When She Says Hearing Me Read My Writing’s like Hearing God”

2nd — Benjamin Garcia, “Huitlacoche”

3rd — Nicole Homer, “Feral and Conjoined” 


The 2018 Palette Poetry Prize

 

1st — torrin a. greathouse, “Hapnophobia or the Fear of Being Touched”

2nd — madison eli johnson, “west harlem, july 2017”

3rd — Brittany Leitner, “Liberosis”

The winner was selected by our guest judge, Shane McCrae.