This year’s Maine Postmark Poetry Contest drew entries from towns across the state and beyond. From those entries, the festival committee chose ten exemplary finalists, and this year’s contest judge, Anna M. Warrock, chose the prize winners.
The top five finalist poems will be read on Saturday, October 19th at the Troy A. Howard Middle School theatre in a program beginning at 6 pm. All ten finalist poems will be on display at Troy Howard during the reading for more casual examination as well.
Contest judge Anna M. Warrock describes the winning poem, "Other Fathers," by Jefferson Navicky:
"The emotion in this poem is carefully registered step by step. This work shows the depth of a so-called list poem and the skill with which the choices made can get it right. Likely the poet made discoveries as they worked to create a multidimensional portrait of the speaker’s inner life and relation to absence, a resonance that resolves into the actual father’s image. The reader can trust the masculinity as defined because the metaphors sharply mark out the speaker’s search, a voice looking toward relation."
Jefferson Navicky was born in Chicago and grew up in Southeastern Ohio. He earned a B.A. in English Literature from Denison University, and an M.F.A. in writing and poetics from Naropa University. He is the archivist for the Maine Women Writers Collection and teaches English at Southern Maine Community College. While working for the Authors League Fund from 2005-2007, he was the archivist for the Djuna Barnes literary estate. Jefferson’s work has received several acknowledgments and awards, including a Good Idea Grant from the Maine Arts Commission and a Maine Literary Award in Drama. Jefferson has held residencies at the I-Park Foundation, Stonington Opera House, St. Luke's Cathedral, and Hewnoaks. He is a former member of the editorial board of The Cafe Review, and is a long-time Poetry Out Loud judge at Yarmouth High School. Jefferson lives in Freeport, Maine with his wife and their dogs.
All ten finalists and their winning poems are:
First Place Winner: Jefferson Navicky, Freeport, "Other Fathers"
Second Place Winner: Matthew Bernier, Pittsfield, "The Best Hay"
Third Place Winner: Laurence Anne Coe, Rockland, "Sentencing"
Honorable Mention: Mark Raymond, Owls Head, "The End of July"
Honorable Mention: Alicia Fisher, Saco, "This One Goes Out To All The Cold Corner Girlz"
Finalists:
Katherine Hagopian Berry, Bridgton, "Springback"
Charles Brown, Owls Head, "Blast from the Past"
Kate Chadbourne, Lunenburg, MA, "No Means No"
Alice Haines, Auburn, "GREEN HAS STRETCHED"
E. Whitman, Portland, "Deep February on Bennoch Road"
Contest judge Anna M. Warrock’s publications include From the Other Room, winner of the first annual Slate Roof Press chapbook contest, and the chapbooks Horizon (Great Owl Press) and Smoke and Stone (Stone Soup Poetry). Her work appears in the anthology Kiss Me Goodnight: Poems and Stories by Women Who Were Girls When Their Mothers Died, for which she also wrote the introduction. Besides appearing in journals such as The Madison Review, Harvard Review, The Sun, Phoebe, and Poiesis, her poems have been set to music, performed at Boston’s Hayden Planetarium, and permanently installed in a Boston-area subway station. Her prose has been published by the New York Times and the San Francisco Chronicle. She has taught poetry classes for the elderly, high school students, and adult education, and held seminars on understanding grief and loss through poetry.