Our April writing competition celebrated poetry in all of its various forms–from slam to ode and limerick to prose. The submissions stunned us with their keen grasp of language, their reverberant reflections, and in the case of our spoken word entries, the urgency of poetry performed aloud. Faced with the nearly impossible task of narrowing down a set of winners, we were honored to work with three-time US poet laureate, Robert Pinksky—the only poet to ever receive the prestigious honor more than once!. Today, we’re excited to share what this widely beloved poet had to say about the top pieces.
Judged by Robert Pinsky:
BEST ENTRY
“Wood and Water” by stravelbach (Australia)
The poem “Wood and Water” splendidly shows how all the senses—vision, touch, smell, a sense of light-and-dark or cool-and-warm—all can be called up by the sounds of words and the melodies of sentences. For example: “The starshine shimmery and waltzing into/ Breath” or “beside a timber deck where water ebbs and drifts.” In language like that, the sounds of consonant and vowel, the melodies of speech, create the reality of a scene.
RUNNER UP
“First Communion of a Mestiza” by Sarina Adeline (United States)
“First Communion of a Mestiza,” from its title on, has an alert, vivid sense of culture as a mix: not just in particular phrases like “pastel juguetes and wicker baskets” but in the overall sense of “both and neither”: “English does not belong to me. Español no pertenece a mí.” From such energized declarations of this negative and that, the poet creates inclusion, all of the above.
Judged by Write the World:
BEST ENTRY (SPOKEN WORD)
“What Ancestry DNA Cannot Tell Me” by Norah Rami (United States)
Rami’s poem moves through the broader inheritances of the body—race, ethnicity, gender, historical context, colonialism—by wielding the poetic “I” with the precision of a fencer. “I was born in a hut, / Fires whispering through the chimney.” And as the fire burns, so does the rage within the speaker. As Rami continues with her birth mythology, we are taken further into the complexities of perseverance of her self and her family: “I was born as my great grandmother / Held my grandfather, not yet a year old / Quieting his cries as they left the rubble of their home behind, / As the British drew a line through our heart, / our home.” Rami brings us into a world where becoming a warrior—of rhetoric, no less—is the way to make something out of that very rubble. And as the speaker recalls all of the tropes of her being, the energy turns from pain to hope. From that ancient line of warriors, she imagines how her own daughter, too, will come into the world screaming, and just like all of the warriors before her, she’ll need to hold to her inheritances tightly to remember where she came from and how that makes her strong.
BEST PEER REVIEW
KR’s (United States) review of “School Days” by aurora2003
KR’s review of “School Days” models for readers everywhere ways in which feedback can lead to productive revision. KR gives praise for passages that are moving by going beyond labeling them as “good” or “amazing”; rather, praise is given with qualifiers of how and why those passages successfully created a sense of suspension of disbelief in the reader. KR also eloquently models where and how the poem would benefit from more descriptors and enactments, going well beyond the customary suggestion of “show, don’t tell” to give the writer concrete feedback, specific to their draft.
