Now in its ninth year, the 2018 Beyond Baroque Poetry Contest was judged by the award-winning poet Diane Seuss. Over 1,000 entries from across the nation were submitted to the contest. Each winner receives a cash prize: first place $1000; second place $500; and third place $250. In addition to the three top prizes, five runner-ups were chosen. Winners and runners-up were selected through a blind reading process in which the judge had no knowledge of the poems’ authors. 

Judge Seuss had this to say about her selections (without knowing authors’ identities):

First Place Winner: THE FIRST [OBSERVED] BLACK HOLE CYGNUS XI. THE FIRST HEN [RAPHAELLA] (by Diane Glancy, Shawnee Mission, KS): This poem is strange and sublime, approaching, in its unenjambed lines, an intersection between the first observed black hole and a hen—the wide expanse of the cosmos and the local particulars of a farm and its particular hen. The poem enacts this unlikely intersection via images and without overkill, rhetoric, or an over-conscious push toward meaning. In twelve lines, a magic both biblical and quotidian unfurls—even “the trees [drop] their feathers in the year” as the lack hole and the coal bucket eat “all the nearby stars.” 

Second Place Winner: THE TENDING (by Laura Grothaus, Baltimore, MD):  “The Tending” is an ekphrastic poem from Hendrick ter Brugghen’s painting Saint Sebastian Tended by Irene. The poem represents an interpenetration of the painting of “women gentling arrows from [Sain Sebastian’s] chest” and a lean, contemporary, seemingly personal, erotic description of a kiss and its impact. The speaker confesses the kiss to Sebastian, patron of dispossessed queens / and tomboy, diners at the altar / of lady ham,” a kiss so powerful “it felt like God / laid a finger on my spine.” This is a poem where art and God, martyrdom and Eros collide, where a kiss awakens us to the realization that “our bodies have been lighthouses all along.” 

Third Place Winner: A HOME FOR BOYS (by Nick Rattner, Houston, TX): “A Home for Boys” is a poem of deep memory, which enacts a beautiful balance of lyric and narrative impulses. The color blue is an element of lyric intensity, an organizing principle, and a sonic presence in the poem. The result is not just of memory but accrues the inexpressible feeling of memory. Where else will we witness a boy called Bunny who “carved / stars of his own constellation, stars / for the next boy, a blue for others” into his bed frame at the Home for Boys? 

Honorable Mentions in alphabetical listing of the poem’s title: 

A by Mary MacGowan

AFTER by Alana Baum

DISTRESSING THE CANVAS OF THE PERSONAL by Jeanne Wagner

INFIRMARY FOR A PRIVATE SOUL by Judith Pacht

OVERDOSE by Alexis Rhone Fancher

A reading of the winning poems will be held at Beyond Baroque on Sunday, July 7th, at 2 PM. Join us in congratulating the winning poets.

Click here to see past poetry contest winners.