Connecticut Poetry Award
Winners of the 2024 Connecticut Award
FIRST PLACE: Arlene DeMaris
Telling the Hive
Knock first to get their attention. Call them out of their city,
away from their industry of pollen and wax. Break the news
gently, inserting the name of your dead. Say what you’ve rehearsed
about the comfort of ceremony, the soul waiting just offstage
and angels wandering in, taking their places on the ceiling.
But in fact you are here to multiply your grief by the number
of wings that will carry it. To make a relic of sweetness.
To say, each absconding is new whenever it happens.
And the ones behind it, the line so long it disappears.
Tell the hive this is not the worst that can happen, but it is
the last. Tell what you disbelieved that morning until the fog
cleared and you saw its bare branches. Tell what the earth
was doing to itself that day, the hills greening up, covered
in starlings pulling the pale wet bodies of slugs from the soil.
Judge’s remarks:
When Queen Elizabeth II died, the royal beekeeper attached black bows on the hives before informing the bees that their queen was dead. Curious about how the poem would utilize this tradition, the first line “Knock first to get their attention” immediately pulled me into “Telling the Hive” and I continued to be impressed every time I returned to Arlene DeMaris’ masterful poem which is actually a very complex exploration of death, the ultimate human mystery, and that in fact, DeMaris depicts the difficulty we all face in dealing with death when it occurs to others and also how confronting it personally by telling the hive is a way to multiply grief “by the number of wings that will carry it.”. Trying to make a “relic of sweetness” the speaker tells the hive “it is not the worst that can happen” but adds “but it is the last.” The final graphic image of starlings “pulling the pale wet bodies of slugs from the soil” conveys an unvarnished message about the constant presence of death hovering over us all.
SECOND PLACE: Shellie Harwood
Little Boy in Gaza
In my nightgown still,
fleece robe drawn tight against me
from the first fall morning’s chill.
I let you pour my coffee, swirling with white cream,
into the worn red mug,
let my fingers wrap like a lover’s around it,
pull it close against my cheek.
Old trees trail their aching fingers
across the window panes, beckoning,
but I am drunk with the luxury of peace.
You kiss the top of my head, child that I am,
and we stand together as always in this season of departure,
rapt in the explosion of autumn’s topaz, flame and sweet burnt umber.
You click the remote, quite absently,
in that casual way we usher in the morning headlines,
jolted back from splendor to the harsh and reckless day.
And I hear the man say,
There is a little boy in Gaza,
taken without his glasses.
It weighs on his father to think of Ohad lost in a dark place.
He cannot manage. His father says it twice.
Ohad cannot manage.
He will quake from war he cannot see.
A blast of leaves rain heavy down, explode outside our window,
forming colored craters in the yellowing yard.
I feel the coffee spill, watch it splatter
across the ivory robe that has fallen open,
that no longer warms me.
And I think of the terrible noise to come
of dead stars falling, of bodies falling across and behind the border,
bombs and mortar shells,
the fall of each tiny lens
beneath the crush of frantic feet.
And little matters now,
but that Ohad is lost in dark without his glasses.
I close my eyes, I hear you close your eyes behind me.
Little boy,
better not to see.
Judge’s remarks:
I was drawn to “Little Boy in Gaza” at once because it captures the struggle I and many of us have each day to reconcile our lives of ease “drunk with the luxury of peace” with the constant media coverage of obliterating wars and the deaths that multiply day by day that threaten to numb and desensitize us. Writing a poem about a child or a political poem presents a challenge and Shellie Harwood manages to accept and overcome the inherent difficulty of the subjects She succeeds in writing about both a political struggle and a boy by focusing on one child, Ohad, a child in Gaza, making him unique by adding the masterful detail that he was “taken without his glasses” by soldiers. Harwood contrasts the “bombs and mortar shells” with “the fall of each tiny lens.” We are left with the picture of Ohad “lost in dark without his glasses” as Harwood addresses him and perhaps us in the conclusion to the poem: “Little boy, better not to see.”
THIRD PLACE: Lauren Crawford
What I Have in Common with a Shovelhead Shark
We're on the bay boat thirty miles deep into the Gulf of Mexico. I've got a shark
that's too big for my pole on the line. It takes forty-five minutes to reel it in.
When the line gets too rough, step-Sir takes over and gives my arms a break.
This is a fight with a creature we don't yet know. But somehow, Sir knows.
Before the long, amber tail flicks a little too close to the surface, before that
pointed nose thrashes through the water, he somehow knows what I've got.
My arms ache, my sun-stained forehead sweats, and I'm out of breath trying
to rip my prize from its home, from everything it knows. Soon enough though,
the fight is over, we win, and all five massive feet of the shark is in the boat with us,
razor teeth slashing, that wicked tail wreaking havoc, knocking lures, bobbers
and apple slivers overboard. I back away, not knowing what to do, but Sir
rushes forward and begins bashing that shovelhead with his fist right between the eyes.
I have to knock him out, he says, or he'll hurt someone when we try to handle him.
Bang goes Sir's fist; bang, bang, bang. It takes a while, the shark is strong,
but for once, I am grateful for his violence. For once, its function is truly protection.
Each blow slows the shark's stuttering movements until his knuckles begin to bleed.
For once, we all agree it's necessary and I can't stop looking at those dorsal veins popping,
the swift, elegant force of his swings. How brutally beautiful it must be to kill a king.
When it's over, Sir's hand is wrecked. Out of water, their skin is like sandpaper,
he tells me, feel him. And I do. I run my hands along my catch, down that long, golden
body leaking the Gulf from his gills. In my mind I try to piece together where I belong,
how I am meant to live but all I can hear is that stiff, hollow sound, that bang
rattling the boat like a signal, like I'm simply waiting for something to end.
Judge’s remarks:
The specific and unflinching detail of “What I Have in Common with a Shovelhead Shark” stayed with me on multiple reads. Lauren Crawford creates a speaker who is very aware of what she is doing in “trying to rip my prize from its home, from everything it knows.” The bestial nature of the shark with “razor teeth slashing, that wicked tail wreaking havoc,” is not a surprise, but the brutality of Sir, the captain, is startling as he bashes the shovelhead between the eyes with his fist until his knuckles bleed and the shark’s dorsal veins pop. The speaker runs her hands down the shark as if it is a lover with its “long, golden body leaking the Gulf from his gills.” Raising the questions inherent in the killing of another species for the sport of it, the speaker ponders “where I belong, how I am meant to live” but offers no rationale or excuse for the fish’s death. She leaves the reader wondering about the title and if it is the brutality, the bestiality that the fish and the speaker have in common.
Judge’s remarks:
John Paul Caponigro’s “Everyone In Your Dream Is You” feels dreamlike in its illogical logic and fanciful style. “If you fall from a great height, catch yourself,” which is only possible in dreamland. Or “eternity is a blink, a blink is eternity.” Or “You are the egg and the egg layer.” The reader is constantly off balance, rather like dreamers who wake with a jolt, feeling as if they are falling, relieved to discover they are not. Pondering these imponderables, the reader notices that certain words have been crossed out. “Watch some body your body caught in waves.” This attention getting device is directly related to a constant struggle the individual faces trying to preserve a unique identity in the face of the constant bombardment from influencers in the social media: “One self is always drowning in another self.” The reader is pulled into the struggle to maintain the self by reading the lines both ways, both with the words lined out and not, which also adds to the otherworldly feeling of the poem. Finally, even the title suggests a double reading: “Everyone in Your Dream is You.” Does this mean the reader, the writer, or both? John Paul Caponigro has created an intriguing poem that invites multiple readings and will stay with the reader long after the page is put down.
Honorable Mention: Deborrah Corr
Night Vision
On our backs in the grass my sister
aimed her flashlight upward as if
its feeble beam could penetrate the night
and teach me to trace the constellations.
Stories in the sky. How the Greeks
or their gods hurled their enemies or allies
against the black expanse. And still they hung
for me to find the outlines of their transformation.
I pretended I could see, could believe what she
told me, just to keep her there, keep her
speaking into the dark. If I lay now in that yard,
long ago plowed under, where would I find
the form of my sister? There’s no weight to hold
her indentation on a lawn made of memory.
When my daughter died, her friends told their son
she was now a star in the heavens. Look up.
You’ll see her shining. Their boy, at three, had sat
on her hospital bed and read to her–
was it Cat in the Hat or Go Dog Go? At the end
of each page, he looked up and aimed his dimpled
smile at her, the joy of the words she’d taught him
sparkling on his teeth. And she, by-passing pain,
gleamed a grin back at him. I search the night sky.
I am overwhelmed by glowing mass. So pointless
to think I could ever find her. The stars answer back
with more stars, the poet tells me. My sister’s
flashlight can’t create her shape. The truth is,
I don’t believe it. Nor did my daughter.
When I asked, in her last days, what she
thought was coming, her answer was quick:
nothing it’s the end lights out. Truth is,
I wanted an answer from the other side.
Truth is, I wanted to be left a spark.
I want her life, shortened though it was,
to be narrated every night by points of light.
Once, alone, on that long ago lawn,
I stared up as twilight dimmed the sky. It was
the color of the lilacs that breathed their scent
into the cooling air. Night, a thick liquid,
flowed down the curves of the inverted bowl above me.
My eyes scanned the arc, waiting for what I knew
would appear–the first freckle of a star, so dim
I almost believed I’d made it up, but when
I looked away and back again, there it was
shining brighter. Then they all rushed in,
blinking on as if they couldn’t wait to be awake
and watching the world. Now it was all
blackness, spread with fields of gold.
That was the time I believed in a god and the stars
of his creation. I believed in the invisible.
How too much daylight can keep you from seeing.
I called my sister two days before she died,
checking in about her heart. She was up
and cleaning. I told her she should be in bed.
Let someone else do the chores. She’d been
talking with God, she said. That was all
the help she needed. I failed to call again.
I had failed her so many times before. I know
She could never quite forgive me, when,
As a newly-formed adult, I dropped the faith.
But we choreographed a careful dance
around the tender, burnt flesh of that topic.
It left us untouchable.
410 light years from earth, seven sisters cluster
inside Taurus, the bull. A safe place Zeus made for girls
pursued by a hunter. My sister’s God was never so protective.
Last April we lit a candle to celebrate
my daughter’s fiftieth–a decade of years
she never got to count. In Spring, Virgo returns–
Persephone reunited with Demeter, the mother
who laid the earth barren to get her child back.
How powerless I am.
My daughter, when she was five, lay beside me
on a blanket. As night slipped in, with its first faint stars,
she said it was like they were squeezed from a tube.
She reached out and plucked one,
and placed it on her tongue.
Note: the poem contains a quote from
Victoria Chang’s “Starlight, 1962”
in With My Back to the World
Judge’s remarks:
The difficulty in writing a lengthy poem is uniting the various strands and, of course, keeping the reader’s interest. Deborah Corr does a masterful job of both in “Night Vision.” She pulls the reader into the poem by depicting her and her sister on their backs identifying constellations of stars which inserts Greek myths of gods who hurled them into the sky. The subjects of stars, her sister and Greek myth are then woven into the poem’s tapestry. The reader immediately learns that her sister is dead, saying “There’s no weight to hold her indentation on a lawn made of memory.” The death of the speaker’s daughter is immediately introduced and the astrological relationship is created by a friend who offered consolation saying “she was now a star in the heavens.” The speaker cannot find either her sister or her daughter, revealing what she wants is “to be left a spark.” Continuing to search the night sky, she again threads in Greek myth with the “seven sisters cluster inside Taurus, the bull. A safe place Zeus made for girls.” In spring, she thinks of Virgo then of Persephone reunited with Demeter” a mother who got her child back concluding, “How powerless I am.” Ultimately, the only way to find consolation the speaker offers herself and the reader is to return to memory: her daughter at five who pretends to reach out and place a star on her tongue.
Honorable Mention: Kathryn Jordan
Solitary Bee
Three days in the house of my old father.
He sits, hunched over, thumbing pages of
a piece written to honor him, determined
to point out mistakes. I offer an apology.
He says, Are you sorry for what you did
or that you wrote it? Then, You know what
I think. I take the bait: “Why isn’t this over?”
My father is silent, still scrolling my work.
I go to my room, consider the cost to fly
home today. Through a dark glass, I see
a bee hovering at the open window, which
I rush to close to a crack, lest a bug enter
or—God forbid—a wild, fresh prairie wind.
The bee lands near a hole in the lock, starts
to dig, tiny legs tugging at tiny bits of web
and shit, squeezing its body into an opening
scarcely larger than itself, emerging to kick
away traces of clinging clotted matter. She
flies off, returning to clear the space inside
over and over. Does she never tire of this?
The sun goes down behind still-bare trees,
washing the prairie of light. All is hushed
and calm, though I don’t know what changed.
I crouch by the window, peering out, hoping
she can rest, solitary bee, hidden in her cave.
Judge’s remarks:
In“Solitary Bee,” Kathryn Jordan utilizes I.A. Richards’ concept of vehicle and tenor in her poem by artfully utilizing a bee’s activity to explore the real subject of the poem which is the speaker’s troubled relationship with her father. What is so significant is the way in which the speaker conveys her sorrow without sinking into sentiment. In doing so, she touches a universal problem of the only too common continuing struggle between children and parents which is frequently not resolved before or after death. The speaker has come seeking her father’s love, his approval by sharing a lengthy tribute. Rather than react with gratitude, he proceeds to “points out mistakes.” Falling into an old pattern, she apologizes. Going even further, he critiques her pages and brings up past sins: “Are you sorry for what you did?” Fleeing back to her room, the speaker shows her disappointment by contemplating the cost of flying home early. Offering a glimpse into her childhood where opening a window risked letting in a bug or fresh air, she sees a bee, who like the speaker returns over and over to a small hole in the window trying to carve out space. The speaker must be referring to herself when she asks, “Does she never tire of this?” Offering some solution for her own struggle, she hopes the bee “can rest, solitary bee, hidden in her cave.”
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2024 Judge Vivian Shipley
Slow Dancing with the Dark, Vivian Shipley’s 14th book of poetry, will be published in 2024 by Louisiana Literature Press. Hindsight:2020 (Louisiana Literature Press, SLU, 2022), was awarded the Paterson Poetry Prize for Literary Excellence. Previous books have won NEPC’s Sheila Motton Award, Word Press Poetry Prize, CT Center for the Book Poetry Prize, Paterson Poetry Prize, and CT Press Club Award for Poetry. She has also been awarded PSA’s Lucille Medwick Prize, Robert Frost Foundation Poetry Prize, William Faulkner Poetry Prize and Ann Stanford Poetry Prize from USC. Shipley is the CT State University Distinguished Professor. Her web site is vivianshipley.net |
Winners Connecticut Poetry Award 2023
FIRST PLACE: Kaecey McCormick
Bruin Walk
On Bruin Walk at the edge of UCLA’s campus
a squirrel, fat from stolen bagels and chips, dropped
from the gnarled branches of an oak to the pavement.
It twitched and twitched as blood pooled beneath
its tiny skull and we all, rushing to the dorms or with
friends to eat or on our way to meet a lover, stopped--
pulled by the gravity of the tiny being’s last moments
on earth. We inhaled and watched, the way years before
we stood side by side in a classroom, watching a space shuttle
explode; the way, a few years from then, we’d watch as first one
and then another plane turned skyscrapers to dust; the way in middle
age we’d watch a mob break our capital. We were all watching--
the basketball players, the loners, the math geeks, the art
students, the fraternity brothers already buzzing. We couldn’t
look away. We could feel a life leaking out, lifting us out
of ourselves for a moment, joined in a collective sigh until
one girl, long, braid swinging, drew closer than the rest.
She approached the squirrel slowly, hands out, and kneeled
by it, stroking its soft sides, looking at it the way you,
no matter your years or your religious beliefs, hope Death’s
angel looks at you, like you were the prodigal returning
home at last, like you were the first star against the dark.
All of us gathered there, even the birds above and the rats
moving through the bushes, stilled, each of us becoming
for a moment the squirrel—comforted by a steady hand
on our body, a welcoming gaze on our trembling eyes,
soft words of assurance in our ear as we paused, then
exhaled our last breath.
Judge’s remarks:
The author evokes a busy outdoor space, then stops time for a campus crowd as a thoughtful young woman extends a hand to comfort a dying animal. Skillful changes in scale hold the reader’s interest from everyday life to bloody death, from global news to local particulars. These quatrains move with deliberate grace.
SECOND PLACE: Laura Rodley
Perfume of Childhood
Hay dry and crackly under sneakered feet,
crunch of dried stalks and tang of crushed clover,
bite of creosote on railroad ties,
the burnt grass besides the rails
after new creosote has been applied,
sulfur in the air just before a thunderstorm,
metallic smell from sun-baked outside faucet
at a friend’s house as you washed your hands,
cupped water up to your face and drank it,
the dank stink of skunk cabbage broken
as you crossed the stream by the short wooden bridge
that was caved in, uncrossable, yet
you crossed the creek, made it home in time.
Cotton candy, the cloying sweetness,
you so rarely ate it, mesmerized by the spin,
its gathering wool on the paper cone,
the cigarette haze lingering on the server;
holding paint upside down, squirting it on the card
that spun on the wheel, the paint oily,
the resulting painting blaring but beautiful,
sun hot on your hair and your new sneakers,
the shoveled dung of the pony that sat
on its haunches at the Arden Fair.
I do not remember being born there,
but I remember the dark rush of the creek water,
the mallard ducklings that paddled their feet
with no fear of snapping turtles,
only the crisp coolness cast
by the shade of the hemlocks overhead,
encircling The Green in greenness,
its everlasting swift scent sharp,
the spongy-red yew berries that dripped clear sap
that were poisonous, never-to-eat,
but we tasted the sap just the same.
How did we ever make it out alive?
Judge’s remarks:
The author evokes childhood adventures in a breathless list poem emphasizing smell, with lines like “the dank stink of skunk cabbage broken.” A sharp collage moves toward an edge of danger that enhances the list, “the spongy-red yew berries that dripped clear sap.”
THIRD PLACE: Diane Hueter
Stranger at the Door
He knows I want to read this letter, I need it like water, like salt, like bread.
He offers it up to me, crumpled from his pocket, unstamped, addressed in ink
with only my name in the script I’ve seen so often on grocery lists and birthday
cards, incredibly precise, finely legible, upright letters familiar as fingers.
The stranger has a face as pale as oatmeal, a suit as dark as oil. He assures me
my father promised me this letter when he called last year, when I watched
my gray phone buzz and buzz, dancing over the tablecloth’s map of memory,
until finally my father spoke to the electronic cellar. Months and moons went by,
went from warm to cold, cold to warm, large as a plate, small as a smile. Left me
counting my pulse in the throbbing thumb I cut slicing melons. Left me
holding my years like bags of candy. Is this man a messenger? Is that
his calling? What does it matter now? My father has died. I can’t see
the moon because I broke my teacup, I can't read the tides because I'm lost
in a wheat field, I can’t hold the paper because my fingers are covered in gilt.
Judge’s remarks:
Before email, people wrote to family members and friends. With this missive, delivered in person, the poet plays with handwriting, “upright letters familiar as fingers,” on an unstamped letter that “Left me/holding my years like bags of candy.”
Bruin Walk
On Bruin Walk at the edge of UCLA’s campus
a squirrel, fat from stolen bagels and chips, dropped
from the gnarled branches of an oak to the pavement.
It twitched and twitched as blood pooled beneath
its tiny skull and we all, rushing to the dorms or with
friends to eat or on our way to meet a lover, stopped--
pulled by the gravity of the tiny being’s last moments
on earth. We inhaled and watched, the way years before
we stood side by side in a classroom, watching a space shuttle
explode; the way, a few years from then, we’d watch as first one
and then another plane turned skyscrapers to dust; the way in middle
age we’d watch a mob break our capital. We were all watching--
the basketball players, the loners, the math geeks, the art
students, the fraternity brothers already buzzing. We couldn’t
look away. We could feel a life leaking out, lifting us out
of ourselves for a moment, joined in a collective sigh until
one girl, long, braid swinging, drew closer than the rest.
She approached the squirrel slowly, hands out, and kneeled
by it, stroking its soft sides, looking at it the way you,
no matter your years or your religious beliefs, hope Death’s
angel looks at you, like you were the prodigal returning
home at last, like you were the first star against the dark.
All of us gathered there, even the birds above and the rats
moving through the bushes, stilled, each of us becoming
for a moment the squirrel—comforted by a steady hand
on our body, a welcoming gaze on our trembling eyes,
soft words of assurance in our ear as we paused, then
exhaled our last breath.
Judge’s remarks:
The author evokes a busy outdoor space, then stops time for a campus crowd as a thoughtful young woman extends a hand to comfort a dying animal. Skillful changes in scale hold the reader’s interest from everyday life to bloody death, from global news to local particulars. These quatrains move with deliberate grace.
SECOND PLACE: Laura Rodley
Perfume of Childhood
Hay dry and crackly under sneakered feet,
crunch of dried stalks and tang of crushed clover,
bite of creosote on railroad ties,
the burnt grass besides the rails
after new creosote has been applied,
sulfur in the air just before a thunderstorm,
metallic smell from sun-baked outside faucet
at a friend’s house as you washed your hands,
cupped water up to your face and drank it,
the dank stink of skunk cabbage broken
as you crossed the stream by the short wooden bridge
that was caved in, uncrossable, yet
you crossed the creek, made it home in time.
Cotton candy, the cloying sweetness,
you so rarely ate it, mesmerized by the spin,
its gathering wool on the paper cone,
the cigarette haze lingering on the server;
holding paint upside down, squirting it on the card
that spun on the wheel, the paint oily,
the resulting painting blaring but beautiful,
sun hot on your hair and your new sneakers,
the shoveled dung of the pony that sat
on its haunches at the Arden Fair.
I do not remember being born there,
but I remember the dark rush of the creek water,
the mallard ducklings that paddled their feet
with no fear of snapping turtles,
only the crisp coolness cast
by the shade of the hemlocks overhead,
encircling The Green in greenness,
its everlasting swift scent sharp,
the spongy-red yew berries that dripped clear sap
that were poisonous, never-to-eat,
but we tasted the sap just the same.
How did we ever make it out alive?
Judge’s remarks:
The author evokes childhood adventures in a breathless list poem emphasizing smell, with lines like “the dank stink of skunk cabbage broken.” A sharp collage moves toward an edge of danger that enhances the list, “the spongy-red yew berries that dripped clear sap.”
THIRD PLACE: Diane Hueter
Stranger at the Door
He knows I want to read this letter, I need it like water, like salt, like bread.
He offers it up to me, crumpled from his pocket, unstamped, addressed in ink
with only my name in the script I’ve seen so often on grocery lists and birthday
cards, incredibly precise, finely legible, upright letters familiar as fingers.
The stranger has a face as pale as oatmeal, a suit as dark as oil. He assures me
my father promised me this letter when he called last year, when I watched
my gray phone buzz and buzz, dancing over the tablecloth’s map of memory,
until finally my father spoke to the electronic cellar. Months and moons went by,
went from warm to cold, cold to warm, large as a plate, small as a smile. Left me
counting my pulse in the throbbing thumb I cut slicing melons. Left me
holding my years like bags of candy. Is this man a messenger? Is that
his calling? What does it matter now? My father has died. I can’t see
the moon because I broke my teacup, I can't read the tides because I'm lost
in a wheat field, I can’t hold the paper because my fingers are covered in gilt.
Judge’s remarks:
Before email, people wrote to family members and friends. With this missive, delivered in person, the poet plays with handwriting, “upright letters familiar as fingers,” on an unstamped letter that “Left me/holding my years like bags of candy.”
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In Honor of CPS Founding Members
Wallace Winchell, Ben Brodine, and Joseph Brodinsky
Made possible through the generous support of
The Adolf and Virginia Dehn Foundation
Submission Period April 1 – May 31
Opento All Poets Prizes: 1st $400; 2nd $100; 3rd $50
Click Here to Submit