Winners
Poetry
2022 WINNERS - POETRY
See below for the list of 2022 winners in the POETRY category, for books with a copyright date of 2021.
Testimony: Found Poems from the Special Court for Sierra Leone
2022 Gold Winner
Author: Shanee Stepakoff
Publisher: Bucknell University Press
ISBN: 978-1-68448-310-5
Derived from transcripts of public testimonies at a UN-backed war crimes tribunal in Sierra Leone, this remarkable poetry collection delicately extracts heartbreaking human stories from the morass of legal jargon. Shanee Stepakoff finds a novel way to communicate not only the suffering of Sierra Leone’s people, but also their courage, dignity, and resilience.
I Was a Bell
2022 Silver Winner
Author: M. Soledad Caballero
Publisher: Red Hen Press
ISBN: 978-1-59709-490-0
In this collection, Caballero imagines how memory frames and reshapes the present, how memory illuminates and limits the stories of ourselves, and how, despite the passage of time, primal moments in the past are the ghosts and echoes of our present.
The Kontum Madonna
2022 Silver Winner
Author: J. Vincent Hansen
Publisher: North Star Press of St. Cloud, Inc.
ISBN: 9781682011218
50 years after the war Hansen continues to mine his time in Vietnam as an 18-year-old machine gunner with the 101st Airborne Division. These poems inform us that no soldier ever grows so old as to see a war's final ripple.
2021 WINNERS - POETRY
See below for the list of 2021 winners in the POETRY category, for books with a copyright date of 2020. Click here to watch the Gold and Silver winner speeches.
His Feathers Were Chains
2021 Gold Winner
Author: Denise K. Lajimodiere
Publisher: North Dakota State University Press
ISBN: 978-1-946163-22-6
Lajimodiere’s newest collection of poetry takes its title from a statue the author observed - an Indian on a horse - fashioned from welded-together farm implements. The premise of the collection is overt criticism of settler society, but the poetry is subtle, approachable, and grounded in Ojibwe knowledge and customs.
Did You Sing Your Song?: Poems
2021 Silver Winner
Author: Mary C. Earle
Publisher: New Beginnings, an imprint of Material Media
ISBN: 978-1-947460-07-2
The poems in this volume reflect a lifetime of listening for what the Irish call "the music of what happens." Mary Earle was inspired by the Divine Song that sings in everything. Her poems invite the reader to listen along and awaken to the rhythms of life.
Shelter
2021 Silver Winner
Author: Margaret Hasse, art by Sharon DeMark
Publisher: Nodin Press
ISBN: 978-1-947237-31-5
In a time of the pandemic, we may find new shades of meaning in the term "shelter." Here poet Margaret Hasse and artist Sharon DeMark pair words and images to depict a variety of shelters including structures (a hut, a bus stop), experiences (hugging, reading), and private retreats.
2020 WINNERS - POETRY
See below for the list of 2020 winners in the POETRY category, for books with a copyright date of 2019.
Homespun Mercies
2020 Gold Winner
Author: DJ Hill
Publisher: Light of the Moon
ISBN: 978-1-7327909-4-0
Told through poetry and original artwork, Homespun Mercies is a journey of the soul, with each page bringing readers to a deeper realization of self.
Human-Powered Poetry from the Appalachian Trail: A Thru-hiker's Perspective
2020 Silver Winner
Author: Daniel "Screech" Zube
Publisher: Peter E. Randall Publisher
ISBN: 978-1-937721-77-0
Hikers will enjoy these short poems and color photographs captured at specific mile markers along the Appalachian Trail. Small enough to pack!
Save Our Ship
2020 Silver Winner
Author: Barbara Ungar
Publisher: The Ashland Poetry Press
ISBN: 978-0-912592-74-9
In this alphabet book of feminist and ecological resistance, #MeToo meets Global Weirding, and women do not mind their tongues, or their Ps and Qs.
the skin of dreams: new and collected poems 1995-2018
2020 Silver Winner
Author: Quraysh Ali Lansana
Publisher: The Calliope Group
ISBN: 978-1-7336474-0-3
the skin of dreams maps small-town Oklahoma to southside Chicago. Exploring complicated terrains of Blackness, history, and home, these poems cry, sing, scream, and see.
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