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, Alexandria Peary, chose the prize winners.
The top five finalist poems will be read on Saturday, October 16th during the Belfast Poetry Festival's main showcase night on Zoom. All ten finalist poems will be on display in the Abbott Room of the Belfast Free Library for more casual examination as well.
Contest judge Alexandria Peary describes the winning poem, "BASHO'S DEATH POEM, NEW YORK CITY," by Mike Bove:
“If ‘Basho's Death Poem, New York City’ decided to stop being a poem, it would probably become an origami finger game, one of those paper contraptions that children use to amuse playmates. The poem is a series of poetic-logical folds, intuitive and deductive at the same time. The interplay between Basho, a death poem, poems that apparently stay as prewriting in a notebook (preferring seclusion like someone napping in a hotel) but somehow push the speaker out the door, and the contemporary urban setting is sheer magic! There's also an interesting range in animation, from subtle to full-throttle personification: notes ‘say,’ the poem ‘wants to follow / the speaker’ on the street, and dreams wander. The rotations of the game come to a natural end with the unwritten, a non-poem, and non-existence, and that ‘wandering dream.’"
Mike Bove is the author of two books of poems: Big Little City (2018) and House Museum (2021). He holds degrees from the University of New Hampshire and is an Associate Professor of English at Southern Maine Community College. Mike lives with his family in Portland, Maine where he was born and raised.
All ten finalists and their winning poems are:
First Place Winner: Mike Bove, Portland, "BASHO'S DEATH POEM, NEW YORK CITY"
Second Place Winner: Jeri Theriault, South Portland, "ode to my father's body"
Third Place Winner: Matt Bernier, Pittsfield, "The Wolffish"
Honorable Mention: Bridget McAlonan, Topsham, "Forest Creatures"
Honorable Mention: Anne Rankin, Brunswick, "Small Primer on Loneliness"
Finalists:
Katherine Hagopian Berry, Bridgton, "Sestina for Building"
David Sloan, Brunswick, "Flames"
Doug "Woody" Woodsum, Smithfield, "Oneness of Thought and Action"
Joel Lipman, Northport, "Analogue Tracks"
Laura Bonazzoli, Rockport, "Evening of PM2.5"
Alexandria Peary grew up in Sidney, Maine and currently serves as Poet Laureate of New Hampshire. She is a 2020 recipient of an Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellowship and is the author of eight books, including Control Bird Alt Delete, Prolific Moment: Theory and Practice of Mindfulness for Writing, and The Water Draft. Her writing has appeared in the Yale Review, North American Review, New York Times, The Gettysburg Review, Denver Quarterly, New American Writing, Southern Humanities Review, New England Review, and Barrow Street. She specializes in mindful writing, the subject of her 2019 TEDx talk, “How Mindfulness Can Transform the Way You Write,” available on YouTube. She is the architect and host of the popular webinar series on mindful writing at the National Council of Teachers of English and has interviewed such luminaries as Shaka Senghor and George Saunders. More information about her initiatives can be found here or on Twitter.