Issue 152 Is Online!

search index
of all issues

Search This Site Enter word(s) to search for:

Now in its second year, the Great Blue Heron Poetry Contest is taking flight. The contest had its inception in 2001, during George Sanderson's last year of editorship, and was enthusiastically endorsed by current editor Allan Quigley in 2002. The response among poets has been wonderfully encouraging as well: nearly four hundred entries were received by The Antigonish Review this past spring.

The judging was, of course, blind, so it was gratifying that all three judges, Karin Cope, Peter Sanger and Anne Simpson, concurred in their choices. Despite the overwhelming number of very good entries, we were forced to whittle these down to a manageable selection. Ultimately, we were delighted to reach a decision about the winning poems so quickly. We were also pleased that these particular poems came to us from the west coast as well as the east, and from both male and female writers. It was almost as if we had determined winners along geographic and gender lines, though this happened quite serendipitously.

Mitchell Parry's entry - awarded first prize - included the numinous, yet powerful "Burn Unit." The poem takes time to reach its final, searing stanza, in this lyrically charged work that is as much about the woman who is the victim of fire as it is about the men who are helping her. The second prize-winning entry - Lori Maleea Acker's "Lies in the Field Like the Sky" - is a long, sinuous poem that makes its passage through a dream-like landscape. Entire stories are concealed, revealed, and concealed again as the poem progresses.

Nicholas Ruddock's third prize-winning entry, including "Sculpin," "Telescope," "Burin," makes for a remarkable triad of prose-poems, so finely executed that they seem burnished. Each one is compressed and elegant, containing the essentials of a pared-down story along with the nuances of a poem. Brad Buie's entry, which tied for third prize, is the very fine and visceral "This Side of Slaughter." There is no flinching here: the poem follows the butchering of a Black Angus with a sustained dedication to detail combined with an almost tender understanding of the significance of this event in the life of a child.

Rebecca Campbell's intriguing poem, "Lilly Alling Follows the Dominion Telegraph Line On Her Way From New York To Siberia," received Honourable Mention. The poem is notable in its scope, as Lilly Alling makes her way from New York to Alaska, making and re-making herself as she goes, for this is a journey of the soul as much as an account of travels through the wild.

We invite you to celebrate the richness and diversity of these winning poems, as well as other fine writing selections offered up in this issue of The Antigonish Review. Enjoy!