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Artsmith Literary Contest - Transitions
Congratulations to Marjorie Manwaring whose poem won the 2010 Artsmith Literary Award!
First Prize: Marjorie Manwaring, Cornucopia
Honorable Mention: Laura LeHew, Snakes in a Bowl
Finalists (in alphabetical order)
Carol Davis, Leonard Bernstein Speaks
Jane DeMillo, Coming Home
Ellaraine Lockie, Drawing Breath and Wellspring
Thank you to our judges and all our contest participants!
Cornucopia
Boys in the field, gold as leaves
tough as pumpkins, do their
insides rattle like gourdswhen helmets clack
when they fling
their trunks into stuffing-pockedtackling dummies, do their insides rattle
like ours?
Whistles in the field, whitepadded pants. Scent of fresh
mow, grunts
and bone-knocking boomspassing through chain link
while we ploink
and plinkin poly tennis dresses
gazelles alongside
goats, battle-ready.First Friday match, first home game
and dance—gold leaves, shadowed
restless, grass stainsheart-soaked and permanent.
Whispers in the field,
young Septemberchilling the air with loss.
Maneuvering the angled sun’s
pigskin, cat-gut chaoswe all gasp the same
rubber-sweating
chimney-smoked airglance sidelong
wipe lip-clung sweat with forearms
toned and tanned.Broken cleats
scuffed tennis shoes
summer slippingthrough a funnel
into fields of Indian corn
bales of hay.by Marjorie Manwaring
Contest Judge:
Sherry Simpson
Simpson is the author of The Way Winter Comes, the Chinook Prize winner, and The Accidental Explorer: Wayfinding in Alaska.
Her work is described by Kirkus Reviews as "A profoundly considered, lyrically wrought, refreshingly hands-on survey of the disappearing frontier in America's wildest state." She has been a Bakeless Nonfiction Scholar at Bread Loaf. She has published essays, columns, articles and book reviews in a variety of literary journals, anthologies, magazines, and newspapers. Most recently a series of short essays she wrote appeared in a photographic book on Glacier Bay National Park.
When not exploring her own connection to the land, she accompanies wildlife biologists as they tag bears threatened by massive clear-cut logging in Tongass National Forest, use radio telemetry to track the ubiquitous moose, and cruise alleys behind fast-food restaurants to puzzle over the behavioral eccentricities of ravens.
Web site: http://sherrysimpson.net/
Contest Pre-Judges:
Noah Ashenhurst's first novel, COMFORT FOOD, won praise and the 2006 Independent Publisher Book Award for Best Regional Fiction (West-Pacific). He received his BA from Western Washington University, and his MFA from the Rainier Writing Workshop. Noah also teaches online English classes in Olympia, Washington. noahashenhurst.com
Casey Fuller has had poems published in The Adirondack Review, Switched-on Gutenberg, and a zine about zombies. He was awarded the 2010 Jeanne Lohmann Poetry Prize. He serves on the board for the Olympia Poetry Network where he organizes poetry readings and workshops. He has an MFA from PLU.
Julie Riddle is the senior writer for marketing and development at Whitworth University and associate editor of Whitworth Today, the university's alumni magazine. She also is the craft-essay editor for Brevity, a journal of concise literary nonfiction. She earned her M.F.A. at the Rainier Writing Workshop at Pacific Lutheran University.
Tina Schumann is the recipient of the 2009 American Poet Prize from The American Poetry Journal and her work received honorable mention in The Atlantic magazine 2008 Poetry Writing Contest. She is a graduate of the University of Washington and received an MFA in creative writing from Pacific Lutheran University. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in various publications including The American Poetry Journal, The Raven Chronicles, PALABRA, Poetry International, Cranky Literary Journal, Pontoon#4, Between Sleeps; the 3:15 Experiment and Enopoetica: An Anthology of Poems Inspired by Wine.
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