The Nutmeg Poetry Award
Made possible through the generosity of the Connecticut Poetry Society
Submission Period
December 1 – January 31
Open to Connecticut Poets only
Prizes: 1st $200; 2nd $100; 3rd $50
Made possible through the generosity of the Connecticut Poetry Society
Submission Period
December 1 – January 31
Open to Connecticut Poets only
Prizes: 1st $200; 2nd $100; 3rd $50
Nutmeg Contest Judge for 2024-2025
Amy Nawrocki is the author of six poetry collections. Her awards include honors from The Connecticut Poetry Society, New Millennium Writings, The Hamden Arts Commission, and The Connecticut Center for the Book. Her most recent collection, Mouthbrooders, was a 2020 Connecticut Book Award finalist. Her nonfiction book, The Comet’s Tail: A Memoir of No Memory, was a 2018 Foreword Review INDIES finalist for best memoir and has been awarded a Gold Medal for the Living Now Mind-Body-Spirit Awards. She lives in Hamden, Connecticut and is currently the Dean of the College Science and Society at the University of Bridgeport.
Winners of the Nutmeg Contest 2024-2025
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FIRST PLACE: Gwen North Reiss
Willow The willow silvers and waves. Rustles its ball-gown warp. The leaves—poured needle wings—sway and wander. It wants wind. While the tree fringes down in its veils of green, water-loving roots spread wide, seek a drain, a broken pipe, a weeping tile. In Japanese legend, a ghost will appear where a willow grows. I read how a gardener collected twigs of willow and wrapped them with wire around a broom handle. He wanted what he had seen in the hands of old women in Sofia who, after a festival that celebrates the Cyrillic alphabet, came out the next morning wearing black and working their twig brooms until they swept every cigarette butt and candy wrapper dropped by the crowds. Its wood bends to the weaver. Warp of its ropes. Old English weorpan, to throw. It throws its weedy parabolas, dry and fine. In winter, leaves and bare branches fish-bone into the nothing of air. Wool fountain against the white meadow. Weightless rain. Judge’s comments: The poem succeeds with its precise, evocative language. The central image grounds us to the page as the speaker takes us through time and place. In the style of Japanese poetry where no word is wasted, the poem is both a meditation on a tree that gives what it can to beauty and usefulness, as it is a poem about language itself—with rich sound, syntax, and meaning. THIRD PLACE: Joanie DiMartino
Spilled Mulberries The speckled tin buckets fill like coal carts: ripened, burgundy-black mulberries slip from slim branches at the slightest touch from fingertips stained purple. Solstice, the heat from summer’s lengthening glitters in the moisture of bruised mulberries, the drowsy retreat of disturbed spiders. Perched on a ladder, my mother picks jewel-toned fruit above her head, feet balanced on wood. For once we’re laughing: no painful clash of tart tongues, no tension spreading like warm jam in a humid kitchen. Barefoot, shaded by thin-veined leaves and her shadow, I pluck mulberries from lower branches ~ plump oval and textured; I’m tempted to taste this sweet, dark gathering. Twisting knotted twigs to select each juicy berry, I hear her descend the ladder-- the bucket spills onto the grass like a waterfall at midnight. I bend to retrieve the scattered mulberries, as my mother’s aged hands continue reaching into June. Judge’s comments: With tightly crafted two-line stanzas, “Spilled Mulberries” marries form and meaning. The tension between daughter and mother is rendered with imagery and action as the poem supplants bruised emotion with simplicity and grace. Please note that winners of a CPS contest in a given year are not eligible to win in any contest of the year immediately following.
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SECOND PLACE: Deborah Howard
Accidental Birds Let’s meet beyond the ticking of clocks where the river flows over smooth stone and wildflowers lace the muddy banks. I will come over the stone wall, knees bloodied from scrambling across sharp-tongued granite. You will walk out of the forest, a canoe hefted on your shoulders, past deer silent on fallen leaves, smelling of rot and redemption. There will be a vagueness to your face, no more than a trick of light. You will not remember the snow that fell in oceanic drifts outside the window where your bed was moored, the small hurts or the last when everything went on as if it wasn’t so. We’ll spread a blanket on the grass, eat handfuls of honey, watch the clouds swim through the sky. I will ask who received you and if they spoke with the voices of lost stars. You will gather accidental birds in your arms- the western grebe, the snowy egret, the red throated loon. You will whisper to them, tell them how to find their way by the green jeweled moss that grows on the north side of the trees and the position of the sun. This time I will listen. Judge’s comments: Here is a poem about the mystery and generosity of love and loss. The poem touchingly captures that too-human yearning to meet again “as if it wasn’t so,” to be healed by the “voices of lost stars.” The poem’s success is a tone which only whispers the sadness of loss; instead, redemptive solace is found among these “accidental birds.” Honorable Mention: John Muro
Home Bound A house, with a light fog laid against it, sits near-hidden except for the dormer windows that appear to be adrift in early morning air – more ruffled oculus than precise square – with their amber light rising and dipping in the darkness, floating eerily above the bleached bodies of overturned boats and piles of weathered timber and in that moment I’m holding hope like day’s first light close to my chest, recalling the want for wonder that led me away from land to where the waves always seem to retract in a slow sprawl of silence and recalling the day before when I was struck by the ornate contrails of cloud descending like pilasters against a flawless canopy of balsam-blue sky and the land fell away before I found myself held by the pull of the marsh mud, forcing me to pause and look more closely at those things nearest to earth and the carnage left behind by the outgoing tide, and each slow, ponderous step revealed how all that is taken from this world is eventually given back and replenished along with the smaller glories scattered about us like the slender sorcerer’s silhouette standing motionless in the fog-bright air, its steadfast gaze focused upon the viscid oil that spreads across the surface of the tidal flats where light and dark mingle in water that, some time ago, had crested and reached a level it could only fall from before the bird turned skywards to pray for a day of plenty with no intention of moving on. Judge’s comments: “Home Bound” spans one continuous sentence, an interior monologue through “fog-bright” exterior of “the carnage left behind by the/outgoing tide.” The poem captures a timelessness of sea-gazing with fluid pacing and strong imagery. |
Nutmeg Contest Judge for 2023-2024
Steve Straight’s books include Affirmation (Grayson Books, 2022), which has won the 2023 William Meredith Award for Poetry, The Almanac (Curbstone/Northwestern University Press, 2012) and The Water Carrier (Curbstone, 2002). He was professor of English and director of the poetry program at Manchester Community College. Currently he is the poet laureate of South Windsor, Connecticut.
Winners of the 2023-2024 Nutmeg Award
FIRST PLACE: Julia Meylor Simpson
Catharina Vermeer Poses for Her Husband
In response to “Young Woman with a Water Pitcher” by Johannes Vermeer
This morning, Jan asked me to pose for him,
ordering me to hold this, to touch that.
As if I didn’t have enough to do.
First, he covered a table with a red cloth,
and placed my jewelry case just so,
slipping a blue ribbon over the edge.
Then he fidgeted with a map on the wall behind me.
He moved it. And moved it again.
Really, what need have we for maps?
He turned my mother’s pitcher ever so slightly.
Again, he said, touch this. Hold that.
And to think where he dropped his muddy boots last night.
Then he told me to turn. Like this. Turn more.
He asked me to look toward the window.
That’s when he whispered: Hold still!
It was early morning. A bird sang in the garden.
Church bells chimed as Delft rubbed its eyes.
I heard the children stir downstairs. And the baby cry.
The air was cool, but the sun had warmed the room.
Ah, the sun! We so seldom see it here.
I must get the clothes outside on the line today.
And, then, suddenly –
Oh, how do I put this into words?
I felt the light pour over me.
Like warm water, it splashed over my bare arm,
soaking the fine hairs there, and then my breast.
my neck, the curls under my hoofdoek.
I don’t know how else to say this.
I finally knew why Jan loves the light more than me.
More than his children. More than life.
White light saturated everything,
turning my drab gown to the bluest of blues.
I glowed. Yes, I glowed.
And just then, Jan gasped.
Again, hold still. Yes, like that.
Hold.
Still.
Judge’s comment:
Catharania Poses for Her Husband is a dazzling ekphrastic poem about one of Vermeer's famous paintings. The poet takes you inside the domestic world from Catharina's point of view, such that you are right there in the kitchen near the window. Vermeer, of course, is known for the play of light in his paintings, but the poet here is somehow able to embody that light as Catharina realizes the nature of her husband's obsession, and, indeed, the nature of creative expression. This is a gorgeous poem I could read over and over. In fact, I did.
Catharina Vermeer Poses for Her Husband
In response to “Young Woman with a Water Pitcher” by Johannes Vermeer
This morning, Jan asked me to pose for him,
ordering me to hold this, to touch that.
As if I didn’t have enough to do.
First, he covered a table with a red cloth,
and placed my jewelry case just so,
slipping a blue ribbon over the edge.
Then he fidgeted with a map on the wall behind me.
He moved it. And moved it again.
Really, what need have we for maps?
He turned my mother’s pitcher ever so slightly.
Again, he said, touch this. Hold that.
And to think where he dropped his muddy boots last night.
Then he told me to turn. Like this. Turn more.
He asked me to look toward the window.
That’s when he whispered: Hold still!
It was early morning. A bird sang in the garden.
Church bells chimed as Delft rubbed its eyes.
I heard the children stir downstairs. And the baby cry.
The air was cool, but the sun had warmed the room.
Ah, the sun! We so seldom see it here.
I must get the clothes outside on the line today.
And, then, suddenly –
Oh, how do I put this into words?
I felt the light pour over me.
Like warm water, it splashed over my bare arm,
soaking the fine hairs there, and then my breast.
my neck, the curls under my hoofdoek.
I don’t know how else to say this.
I finally knew why Jan loves the light more than me.
More than his children. More than life.
White light saturated everything,
turning my drab gown to the bluest of blues.
I glowed. Yes, I glowed.
And just then, Jan gasped.
Again, hold still. Yes, like that.
Hold.
Still.
Judge’s comment:
Catharania Poses for Her Husband is a dazzling ekphrastic poem about one of Vermeer's famous paintings. The poet takes you inside the domestic world from Catharina's point of view, such that you are right there in the kitchen near the window. Vermeer, of course, is known for the play of light in his paintings, but the poet here is somehow able to embody that light as Catharina realizes the nature of her husband's obsession, and, indeed, the nature of creative expression. This is a gorgeous poem I could read over and over. In fact, I did.
SECOND PLACE: Patricia Hale
Bar Room Pantoum
Laramie, Wyoming, 1981
The door opened, and night barged in, air outside
so cold snow squeaked under foot, cold enough
to freeze a schoolteacher’s lungs. (She died,
gas can frozen to her palm.) Nights were rough,
so cold snow squeaked under foot, cold enough
a crummy old bar felt good, felt like home.
(A gas can frozen to her hand!) Nights were rough--
if you stayed away it meant you drank alone,
so a crummy old bar felt good, felt like home,
country music, and at the tap, the bar man talking
(If you stayed away, you’d just drink alone)
or washing glasses, dip in soapy, rinse in clear. Rocking
country music, and at the tap, the bar man talking,
keeping an eye on whose calm shell might crack.
Or washing glasses, just a dip, a rinse, rocking
on his barstool, drinking himself numb, LeAnn in the back--
keeping an eye on whose calm shell might crack.
Mack playing pool for small stakes, low over the table,
or on his barstool, numb, LeAnn in the back,
her dress falling open, balance unstable
playing for small stakes, leaning low over the table,
unraveling her opponents with a hint of yes;
her dress falling open, balance unstable.
now she’s dancing, holding the skirts of her dress.
unraveling the room with the possibility of yes,
with her swirling skirts, and her thick black hair.
LeAnn dancing, twirling in her dress--
her man watching, not yet straying from his chair.
Judge’s comment:
A pantoum is very challenging form, with its rhyme and repetition of lines, but this poet makes it seem like child's play. Tight, interlocking images create the wild scene of a bar in bleak mid-winter Wyoming, with a narrative of characters woven through it. This seems like merely natural wordplay, which belies its challenge. You sense repetition, but each stanza offers variations that reveal these people and this place vividly. Jealous poet here.
Bar Room Pantoum
Laramie, Wyoming, 1981
The door opened, and night barged in, air outside
so cold snow squeaked under foot, cold enough
to freeze a schoolteacher’s lungs. (She died,
gas can frozen to her palm.) Nights were rough,
so cold snow squeaked under foot, cold enough
a crummy old bar felt good, felt like home.
(A gas can frozen to her hand!) Nights were rough--
if you stayed away it meant you drank alone,
so a crummy old bar felt good, felt like home,
country music, and at the tap, the bar man talking
(If you stayed away, you’d just drink alone)
or washing glasses, dip in soapy, rinse in clear. Rocking
country music, and at the tap, the bar man talking,
keeping an eye on whose calm shell might crack.
Or washing glasses, just a dip, a rinse, rocking
on his barstool, drinking himself numb, LeAnn in the back--
keeping an eye on whose calm shell might crack.
Mack playing pool for small stakes, low over the table,
or on his barstool, numb, LeAnn in the back,
her dress falling open, balance unstable
playing for small stakes, leaning low over the table,
unraveling her opponents with a hint of yes;
her dress falling open, balance unstable.
now she’s dancing, holding the skirts of her dress.
unraveling the room with the possibility of yes,
with her swirling skirts, and her thick black hair.
LeAnn dancing, twirling in her dress--
her man watching, not yet straying from his chair.
Judge’s comment:
A pantoum is very challenging form, with its rhyme and repetition of lines, but this poet makes it seem like child's play. Tight, interlocking images create the wild scene of a bar in bleak mid-winter Wyoming, with a narrative of characters woven through it. This seems like merely natural wordplay, which belies its challenge. You sense repetition, but each stanza offers variations that reveal these people and this place vividly. Jealous poet here.
THIRD PLACE: Terri Yannetti
Darkness and Light
It would be known as
the Great Northeastern Blackout,
but for me, there was so much
light in the midst of darkness. The blackout
meant my father couldn’t go to the night
shift he worked after his day job. He was
home to help with my history project --
creating a fleet of Viking battleships
from bars of soap. “Bars to be carved by
an adult!” insisted the ancient
nun, who taught fourth-grade history.
We worked at the kitchen table with
candles that stood like sentinels along
the counters, and a full orange moon
hovering inquisitively at the window;
while my mother trooped the little sisters
into a bedroom, where she would tell them
fairy tales by heart in the glow
of a flashlight. Wielding a paring knife,
my father trimmed ribbons of soap off
square bars, transforming them into slender
vessels with symmetrical ends. I cut
out an array of tricolored paper sails,
hoisting them onto each ship with toothpick
masts. Then I rimmed the ships’ starboard flanks
with rows of glossy thumbtack shields, burnished
gold in candlelight. “Fine work,” my father
nodded, and I was so thrilled, I saw
the sails begin to billow, though it was
probably just an illusion from
the flickering candle flames.
Had you listened as we worked, you
would have heard me recount what our class
had learned about Viking voyagers,
dwelling on stories that first stopped them
from venturing out into uncharted
waters. Were there hungry sea monsters
or horned dragons bellowing fire
that turned waves into writhing infernos?
I may have shivered at such imagery,
to be reminded by my father that daunting
as such voyages seemed, what seafarers
most feared was what they did not know.
“So it helps to know all you can,” he added.
“Yes,” I exhaled, pulled back to our kitchen
in the cocoon of a blackout; to hear
from down the hall the easy cadence
of my mother’s voice, but not the words,
interrupted by my sisters’ surprised
squeals at hobgoblins of another kind.
More than half a century has passed,
and what I know is light and darkness
are threaded through every life. I’ve watched
the moon shift shape and change size.
Seen it climb the sky, gild landscapes,
glint off the headstone of my father’s grave.
Judge’s comment:
Darkness and Light takes us inside a child's experience of the great blackout of the Northeast while controlling the description through the adult's looking back. The scene is vivid and real, and the theme of darkness and light is woven into the narrative so well, along with fear of the unknown, "hobgoblins of another kind." Light from candles and moonlight is a touchstone throughout the poem, and moonlight cinches a great ending that calls back to the opening section.
Darkness and Light
It would be known as
the Great Northeastern Blackout,
but for me, there was so much
light in the midst of darkness. The blackout
meant my father couldn’t go to the night
shift he worked after his day job. He was
home to help with my history project --
creating a fleet of Viking battleships
from bars of soap. “Bars to be carved by
an adult!” insisted the ancient
nun, who taught fourth-grade history.
We worked at the kitchen table with
candles that stood like sentinels along
the counters, and a full orange moon
hovering inquisitively at the window;
while my mother trooped the little sisters
into a bedroom, where she would tell them
fairy tales by heart in the glow
of a flashlight. Wielding a paring knife,
my father trimmed ribbons of soap off
square bars, transforming them into slender
vessels with symmetrical ends. I cut
out an array of tricolored paper sails,
hoisting them onto each ship with toothpick
masts. Then I rimmed the ships’ starboard flanks
with rows of glossy thumbtack shields, burnished
gold in candlelight. “Fine work,” my father
nodded, and I was so thrilled, I saw
the sails begin to billow, though it was
probably just an illusion from
the flickering candle flames.
Had you listened as we worked, you
would have heard me recount what our class
had learned about Viking voyagers,
dwelling on stories that first stopped them
from venturing out into uncharted
waters. Were there hungry sea monsters
or horned dragons bellowing fire
that turned waves into writhing infernos?
I may have shivered at such imagery,
to be reminded by my father that daunting
as such voyages seemed, what seafarers
most feared was what they did not know.
“So it helps to know all you can,” he added.
“Yes,” I exhaled, pulled back to our kitchen
in the cocoon of a blackout; to hear
from down the hall the easy cadence
of my mother’s voice, but not the words,
interrupted by my sisters’ surprised
squeals at hobgoblins of another kind.
More than half a century has passed,
and what I know is light and darkness
are threaded through every life. I’ve watched
the moon shift shape and change size.
Seen it climb the sky, gild landscapes,
glint off the headstone of my father’s grave.
Judge’s comment:
Darkness and Light takes us inside a child's experience of the great blackout of the Northeast while controlling the description through the adult's looking back. The scene is vivid and real, and the theme of darkness and light is woven into the narrative so well, along with fear of the unknown, "hobgoblins of another kind." Light from candles and moonlight is a touchstone throughout the poem, and moonlight cinches a great ending that calls back to the opening section.
Honorable Mention: Catherine DeNunzio
The Couple
For a moment in the early morning glow,
I did not recognize them, their form
merely suggested, their words
indecipherable. Yet as they
murmured, their exchange
undulating like a silk slip
hung by an open window,
I became pure consciousness:
my synapses undistracted
by the impulse toward language;
my mind freed from the burden
of reasoning, disconnected
from the vast turmoil
looming at my threshold.
I have always loved quiet scenes
of spousal life in foreign language films.
On a stage of domesticity, dialogue
quotidian, instinctive, evocative,
and within me, a longing
untranslatable by subtitles on a screen.
But this couple, this morning:
they were you and I, and
I understood that with you,
what I yearn for would always
be available, were I not I,
were this not Earth.
Judge’s comment:
The couple is both a love poem and a paean to domesticity, simple and deep at once, with terrific power in the last two phrases. This poem resonates long beyond a reading.
The Couple
For a moment in the early morning glow,
I did not recognize them, their form
merely suggested, their words
indecipherable. Yet as they
murmured, their exchange
undulating like a silk slip
hung by an open window,
I became pure consciousness:
my synapses undistracted
by the impulse toward language;
my mind freed from the burden
of reasoning, disconnected
from the vast turmoil
looming at my threshold.
I have always loved quiet scenes
of spousal life in foreign language films.
On a stage of domesticity, dialogue
quotidian, instinctive, evocative,
and within me, a longing
untranslatable by subtitles on a screen.
But this couple, this morning:
they were you and I, and
I understood that with you,
what I yearn for would always
be available, were I not I,
were this not Earth.
Judge’s comment:
The couple is both a love poem and a paean to domesticity, simple and deep at once, with terrific power in the last two phrases. This poem resonates long beyond a reading.
Honorable Mention: Adele Evershed
Lies and Other Things I Found Behind the Bins
In the beginning
You asked me what I was made of
I laughed and said sugar and spice
But really consummation made me
I remember the youth club sermon on abstinence
And asking if it came from absinthe
The priest sending me outside into the light
Where the oil was made holy in puddles
And the only hims were called Dave or Bobby
Who offered me communion behind the bins
With ash under their feet and lies on their lips
They gave me a taste of cider
And it was sweet like subterfuge
I have tried so hard to forget those years
The sadness of a sunrise
That smells of stale beer and nameless fucks
Or the melancholy song of the thrush
That walked me home on a Sunday morning
I do not think we will live happily ever after
Because endings only happen one way
But you have told me you will never lie
And each Sunday after you put out the bins
You make me a cup of tea and say
‘No sugar because you’re sweet enough’
And when you kiss me
I pretend it feels like redemption
Judge’s comment:
This poem comes in three sections: establish the present, explore the past, then attempt to reconcile with the present. The middle has a raw honesty (even though it also has some nice puns) and the grounding present section is sweet. This is a love poem cherishing the present while wary of it.
Lies and Other Things I Found Behind the Bins
In the beginning
You asked me what I was made of
I laughed and said sugar and spice
But really consummation made me
I remember the youth club sermon on abstinence
And asking if it came from absinthe
The priest sending me outside into the light
Where the oil was made holy in puddles
And the only hims were called Dave or Bobby
Who offered me communion behind the bins
With ash under their feet and lies on their lips
They gave me a taste of cider
And it was sweet like subterfuge
I have tried so hard to forget those years
The sadness of a sunrise
That smells of stale beer and nameless fucks
Or the melancholy song of the thrush
That walked me home on a Sunday morning
I do not think we will live happily ever after
Because endings only happen one way
But you have told me you will never lie
And each Sunday after you put out the bins
You make me a cup of tea and say
‘No sugar because you’re sweet enough’
And when you kiss me
I pretend it feels like redemption
Judge’s comment:
This poem comes in three sections: establish the present, explore the past, then attempt to reconcile with the present. The middle has a raw honesty (even though it also has some nice puns) and the grounding present section is sweet. This is a love poem cherishing the present while wary of it.
Honorable Mention: Judith Liebmann
On the Beach under a Night Sky
How far away and long ago everything seems.
They say the stars whose radiance I embrace
have been dead for eons, their beams
just an illusion, collapsing time and space.
Yet here, under that arc of glittering dead light,
my feet anchored in the still-warm sand, held firmer
by Earth’s pull and the thick air of night,
I stand, alive to the lure of the surf’s insistent murmur.
I wade into the dark matter of the velvet sea,
falling forward with outstretched hands.
From my fingertips, as if suddenly thrown free,
a wake of tiny glitter-balls spins off in strands.
With each stroke, luminescence blooms anew
as dinoflagellates and moonlike jellyfish, living
creatures of the deep, gleam a delicate earthly blue.
Mimicking the firmament for which I have been grieving,
their glow suggests that close at hand celestial life exists -
that even in this time-and-space allotment, it persists.
Judge’s comment:
Some might call this a fairly old-fashioned poem, with its strict rhyme scheme, but there is a lot of subtle work being done here under the guise of very natural language. Hearing the poem instead of seeing it, one might not even get how much it rhymes. Although not a strict Italian sonnet, it has the feel of the sonnet and has a wonderful rhyming last two lines, with sound, rhythm, and meaning worthy of the best sonnets.
On the Beach under a Night Sky
How far away and long ago everything seems.
They say the stars whose radiance I embrace
have been dead for eons, their beams
just an illusion, collapsing time and space.
Yet here, under that arc of glittering dead light,
my feet anchored in the still-warm sand, held firmer
by Earth’s pull and the thick air of night,
I stand, alive to the lure of the surf’s insistent murmur.
I wade into the dark matter of the velvet sea,
falling forward with outstretched hands.
From my fingertips, as if suddenly thrown free,
a wake of tiny glitter-balls spins off in strands.
With each stroke, luminescence blooms anew
as dinoflagellates and moonlike jellyfish, living
creatures of the deep, gleam a delicate earthly blue.
Mimicking the firmament for which I have been grieving,
their glow suggests that close at hand celestial life exists -
that even in this time-and-space allotment, it persists.
Judge’s comment:
Some might call this a fairly old-fashioned poem, with its strict rhyme scheme, but there is a lot of subtle work being done here under the guise of very natural language. Hearing the poem instead of seeing it, one might not even get how much it rhymes. Although not a strict Italian sonnet, it has the feel of the sonnet and has a wonderful rhyming last two lines, with sound, rhythm, and meaning worthy of the best sonnets.