Hey, the Firestarter writing challenge started a halfway decent fire.
I tried the complex form of a double abecedarian, at my own suggesting, from the August 19th firestarter challenge, and just received word that it was a finalist for the James Hearst Poetry Prize put on by the North American Review. Of 331 Entrants and 1461 submitted poems, the readers and Molly Peacock chose 18 finalists, three received places and three Honorable Mentions. Yeah, I know, it didn’t win, well, I’m still learning too, ok? The first place poem was Kate Buckley, just down the road in Laguna Beach, for the poem “The Life Cycle of Moths,” which is very exciting for her. Second and third places went to Sarah Heffner’s “Elevator Conversation,” and Deborah Fries’s “Reconstitution.” So you too can turn an exercise into a publishable poem. Give it a shot!
The honorable mentions were:
Joan Colby for “I am calm and happy but desperately anxious to live”
Elizabeth Haukaas for “Red”
Michael Kriesel for “Secret Women”
The other finalists (who will also be published in that issue)
Roy Bentley for “Funeral in the South”
Greg Braquet for “Car Maps”
George David Clark for “The Secret Lives of Lady Gymnasts”
Barry Dickson for “Barry Dickson 1945–”
Zebulon Huset for “Cabo San Lucas, 2007: A Double Abecedarian”
Kimiko McGonigle for “She Learned”
Susan Norris for “For My Mother”
B.V. Olguin for “Chin”
Douglas F. Parham for “The Jealous Praise of Flannel Sleep Attire”
Emily Lupita Plum for “Two Islands”
Michael Spence for “And Don’t Forget the Fruit”
Joshua Wood for “Dream Creatures”
February 5th, 2008 at 5:29 pm
Congratulations Zeb! Those firestarter challenges provide one of the harder elements to obtain when writing… a place to start. Looks like you may have something there.