This year’s Maine Postmark Poetry Contest drew entries from towns across the state. From those entries, the festival chose ten exemplary finalists, and this year’s contest judge Timothy Liu of New York chose the prize winners.
The top five finalist poems will be read on Saturday, October 13th at the Troy A. Howard middle school theatre in a program beginning at 6 pm. All ten finalist poems will be on display at the Troy Howard during the reading for more casual examination as well.
Contest judge Timothy Liu describes the winning poem, "Man in the Mud," by Lee Sharkey:
“A memorable ekphrastic poem does not merely describe but embodies, animates, revives. Of course it makes you want to see the original, on-site, online, or bound in a monograph, but it’s also not required to handle the corpse when you have the living tissue of language displayed before you, line by line, the fine brushwork of each line so alive, sensitive, inventive, responsive, that one marvels and wonders at this breath-taking totentanz where life, death, and art join hands in one eternal round.”
Lee Sharkey is the author of Walking Backwards (Tupelo, 2016), Calendars of Fire (Tupelo, 2013), and nine earlier full-length poetry collections and chapbooks. Her poems have appeared in Consequence, Crazyhorse, FIELD, Kenyon Review, Massachusetts Review, Nimrod, and many other journals and anthologies. Her recognitions include the Ballymaloe International Poetry Prize, the Abraham Sutzkever Centennial Translation Prize, the RHINO Editors’ Prize, and the Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance’s Distinguished Achievement Award.
All ten finalists and their winning poems are:
First Place Winner: Lee Sharkey, Portland, "Man in the Mud"
Second Place Winner: Jay Franzel, Wayne, "Picnic Area, Side of the Road"
Third Place Winner: David Sloan, Brunswick, "Unspoken"
Honorable Mention: James McKenna, Hallowell, "The Business Cards Displayed in the All Night Cafe"
Honorable Mention: Laurence Anne Coe, Rockland, "Scarf"
Finalists:
Leonore Hildebrandt, Harrington, "Child Soldier"
Rebecca Jessup, Belfast, "Future Plans with my Late Father"
Mike Bove, Portland, "Hitting a Sparrow on I-295"
Laura Bonazzoli, Rockport, "I hope it is an honorable death."
Erin Flynn, Auburn, "Monarch"
Contest judge Timothy Liu's publications include Of Thee I Sing (2004), a Publishers Weekly Book of the Year; Vox Angelica (1992), a Poetry Society of America’s Norma Farber First Book Award winner; Bending the Mind Around the Dream’s Blown Fuse (2009); and several others. He is the editor of Word of Mouth: An Anthology of Gay American Poetry (2000). The son of Chinese immigrants, Liu was born in San Jose, California and spent two years as a missionary in Hong Kong, though he no longer practices Mormonism. He has taught at William Paterson University and Bennington College’s Graduate Writing Seminars, and currently lives in New York City.