Crab Creek Review Announces 2012 Poetry Contest Results!

Poetry Contest Judge, Susan Rich, has chosen the following poems as the winner, honorable mentions, and finalists of our annual Crab Creek Review Poetry Contest:

Winner:
Leia Penina Wilson-- "And we lost the city we woke up in"

(Leia Penina Wilson’s “and we lost the city we woke up in” is the most interesting break-up poem I’ve ever had the pleasure to read. Part fugue, part country song, part high lyric yearning --- the poem creates a world of broken images in a slow, calm, and utterly controlled measure. There are so many lines I admire here & i crawled inside you and took off all my clothes and still couldn’t exorcise your heart is a line I wish to steal as well as i built a boat with all the towels in your closet &. The ampersand becomes a character of its own moving across the poem to mark different beginnings, endings, and middles. I’ve called this a break-up poem but it could just as easily be a poem of building up a self, constructing an identity through loss and love; the way we all must do.  ~Susan Rich)

Honorable Mentions:
Dave Jarecki-- "Nona Says As I’m Leaving for College"

(The juxtaposition of ordinary phrasing made extraordinary hooks me with each reading of “Nona Says As I’m Leaving for College”:  Stay off the weed, the dope. Don’t think/ is a line that delights me each time I read it. ~Susan Rich)

Greg Nicholl-- "Later I Dreamt the Black Rabbit"

(“Later I Dreamt the Black Rabbit” mixes the real with the surreal creating a world where to purchase a train ticket to a strange town / because you like the sound of its name, makes perfect sense. This is a poem I want to live inside of. ~Susan Rich)

Matthew Guenette-- "A Failure of Spring Rain"
(“A Failure of Spring Rain” is a poem drenched in summer love and a nostalgia told wild and fresh: bass banged so low it migrained our knees, but wasn’t it good, that gasoline smell? ~Susan Rich)

Jessica Walsh-- "The Balloon Artist Falls in Love"
(In “The Balloon Artist Falls in Love” I admire the poet’s cinematic images of “giraffes” and “beach skeletons,” “burning dollars” and “the moon’s terrible failure” which come together to create a trancelike state in this reader’s mind. ~Susan Rich)

Finalists (in alphabetical order):

Judith Barrington-- "Lake Patzcuaro"
Judith Barrington-- "Not a Credo"
Dave Byrd-- "Spring Cleaning"
Katie Eberhart-- "Efficiency Is A Force of Nature As Well As Economics"
Katharine Ogle-- "Riddle For Hunger"
Anna Scotti-- "Philadelphia"
Anna Scotti-- "Save Me a Slice of Raisin Toast…"
Claire Skinner-- "What’s New"
Maya Jewell Zeller-- "The Big Quiet"

Thank you to Susan Rich for judging our contest and to our poetry editor, Ronda Broatch. We received a large number of incredible poems this year. Thank you to all of the poets who entered--we enjoyed reading your work!

Look for all of these poems in Crab Creek Review 2013 v.1.