| 2008
Contest Committee:
Coordinator/Judge: Marcie
Lynn Tentchoff
Judge: W. Gregory Stewart
Judge: Scott Virtes
Judge: Jaime Lee Moyer
Publicist: Terrie Leigh Relf
Vote Tabulator: John
Borneman
2007
Contest Winners:
2006
Contest Winners Archive
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2008 SFPA Poetry Contest Winners
The SFPA Contest Committee is pleased to announce
the results of the 2008 Poetry Contest. We received more than 400 poems from more than 25 countries.
Poems came in from Australia, Austria, Britain, Canada, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, England,
France, Germany, Great Britain, India, Ireland, Japan, Malaysia, Malta, the Netherlands, New Zealand,
Nigeria, Pakistan, Romania, Scotland, South Africa, South Korea, UK, USA, and Wales, as well as from
40 U.S. states.
The entries were judged blind, and the judges selected one honorable mention and eight judges' picks
as well as the top three winners.
1st Place: "She Seemed So Quiet" by Marion E. Boyer
2nd Place: "Artifacts of Intelligent Design" by Elizabeth Barrette
3rd Place: "And I Fly" by Frances Shi
1st Honorable Mention: "Photograph of Mt. St. Helens" by Lois P. Jones, Glendale, CA
Lois receives a copy of The Poet's Workshop — and Beyond by Terrie
Leigh Relf, M.A.
Judge's Picks:
- Marcie Tentchoff's choices
-
- "Dead City" by Scot Brannon, Seattle, WA
Scot will receive a copy of the SFPA Sonnets Chapbook and Charles Gramlich's Wanting the Mouth of a Lover,
both donated by Spec House of Poetry.
- "Potential Energy" by M. Frost, Baltimore, MD
M. Frost is awarded a copy of Covenant by Elissa Malcohn.
Jaime Lee Moyer's choices -
- "Don Quixote's Quandry" by Colleen Anderson, Vancouver, BC, Canada
Colleen's prizes are a copy of The Shantytown Anomaly #3 and
Greg Beatty's Phrases of the Moon, courtesy Spec House of Poetry.
- "a star hunt" by Nadia Chaney, Vancouver, BC, Canada
Nadia receives The Shantytown Anomaly #5 and a copy of
Kendall Evans's chapbook Poetry Red-Shifted in the Eyes of a Dragon, both
donated by Spec House of Poetry.
W. Gregory Stewart's choices -
- "Scientific Experiment/1927" by Elizabeth Penrose, Pittsburgh, PA
Elizabeth is awarded a copy of The Shantytown Anomaly #2 and
a copy of Bits and Pieces by Greg Schwartz, courtesy Spec House of Poetry.
- "Future Freedom" by Elizabeth Bennefeld, Fargo, ND
Elizabeth receives Passionate Eye: The Collected Writings of Suzanne Vega by Suzanne Vega.
Scott Virtes' choices -
- "Stone, Soup, Bones" by William Copeland, Redford, MI
William's prizes are The Shantytown Anomaly #4 and David C. Kopaska-Merkel's
Drowning Atlantis, both from Spec House of Poetry.
- "Playing Duets with Heisenberg's Ghost" by Peg Duthie, Nashville, TN
Peg receives The Shantytown Anomaly #6 and Kendall Evans's
Star Birth (Postcard) - both courtesy Spec House of Poetry.
1st Place
She Seemed So Quiet
by Marion E. Boyer
Mattawan, MI
Before last week no one guessed that deep below
the surface a third of the living stuff
on the planet seethes in the dark. On the sea floor
microbes pile up black knobby spires.
Chimneys rise soft and fleshy, towering
in effervescent mist. It is cold. No fish
live at that depth. Banked in secret niches
methane forms and traps in ice-like cages.
Most of the methane never escapes,
though sailors have seen flashes ignite waters
of the Black Sea. There've been landslides,
tsunamis, oxygen losses, mass extinctions.
The sky whispers blue, blue. Distant sails tilt and glide.
A gull shrieks. Which wave tips the tide?
What strain before a small fault gives way?
Gas blistered up from the bottom once. It set the world on fire.
First Prize: $100 cash, publication on the SFPA website, a Waterman pen and journal, a signed
hardcopy copy of The Journey to Kailash by Mike Allen, a copy of In the Yaddith
Time by Ann K. Schwader, and a one-year SFPA membership.
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2nd Place
Artifacts of Intelligent Design
by Elizabeth Barrette
Charleston, IL
These were the things we discovered in the World That Had Been Made:
• skulls of animals and people, each plate neatly bolted into place,
gears still sharp: yet all dead, nestled in silent dust
• great cables snaking underground, embracing the continents;
our geologists told us these had once controlled the fault lines, but now
the ground trembled and shivered at our touch
• jewels that shone in the broken sunlight, casting not shadows but shows
of aliens capering through the remnants of their cities
• stones that broadcast their brilliant thoughts into our brains, explaining
how the World That Had Been Made came to an end
when the Energy that sustained it diminished,
leaving all brightlife to dwindle away.
Then we looked at each other, our soft hands scratched by the hard artifacts,
our biological digestion already signalling hunger, our skins smelling of sweat;
and we looked at the beautiful brightlife beings now lying dead before us,
all their shining systems fallen still, their world a stopped clock in the cosmos;
and it humbled us to stand there, in the face of intelligent design,
with our clumsy chemical systems - evolved through chaos and nature -
still running.
Second Prize: $40 cash, SFPA website publication, an original painting by
Marge Simon (the
winner's choice of three), a one-year subscription to Dreams & Nightmares, and a copy of
Riffing on Strings, edited by Sean Miller and Shveta Verma.
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3rd Place
And I Fly
by Frances Shi
Woodhaven, NY
There is Death at my bedside, leering, sneering, jeering,
He is advancing, up, up, up- why the rush? Take your time
In these final moments, I am so cold and alone,
Alone, but for the angels that haunt me.
These angels, these demons, I have seen them before,
They have been at my side for months,
Drinking my life, devouring my soul,
Feasting on my spirit, savoring every molecule, every atom.
They've taken so much, and yet they've taken nothing,
The memories still haunt me in my last hour,
As I grow weaker, my energy fading, dying,
As they loom larger in the horizon of my sight.
This is how we die; this is how we live,
There are demons all around, waiting to kill, to devour,
Until weakness overcomes us, until our life fades
Into ashes...
I close my eyes,
And dream of flying, of soaring, of breathing the ocean
I take my last breath,
And I fly.
Third Prize: $20 cash, SFPA website publication, a copy of Lost Innocence: A Niteblade
Anthology edited by Rhonda Parrish, and a copy of
Sporty Spec: Games of the
Fantastic edited by Karen A. Romanko.
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