2011 NCPS Contest Winners

Mrs. Just In Case

They tell me I should say the thing I cannot say,
to direct it skyward,
written in black marker
on a piece of tissue paper,
attached to the knot end
of a red, white, and blue balloon
and string that I will release
along with seven thousand others
in the middle of a park,
in the middle of D.C.,
near the white mushroom cloud
of the capitol.

That’s how everything looks
to me now.
Even though I’ve never seen an IED,
I know its ghost plumes
in the bulbs of cauliflower
mom steams for dinner
and serves with gobs of cheese
as if eating it that way
makes grief easier to swallow.
I see its shrapnel
in the petals of the daisies
I draw on my bare knees,
tattooing my body
with the black mark
of the widow.

I am only eighteen
but there is much to remember:
Courthouse steps slick with rain,
justice honorably presiding,
to give us that one last week
of husband
and wife,
a motel room on the beach,
nine bottles of wine
we drank illegally, under age
but old in other ways,
the papers we had to sign
just in case, just in case.

I want to write the general:
Why not give us truckloads
of tissue as standard issue?
But instead I see your eyes
floating above the name
I sign: Mrs., just in case
some miracle of helium
and wing of angel
delivers something of me
to wherever you’ve gone to.

-ANDREA BATES

2011′s NCPS Poet Laureate Award winning poem.

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Joanna Catherine Scott Award (Richard Katrovas, Judge)

First Place: “The Ground of Craft” Sharon Sharp
Second Place: “Yellow Pantoum” Andrew Kalnik
Third Place: “Ted and Sylvia Sestina” Beth Cagle Burt
Honorable Mentions:
“Sonnet: When Winter Winds” Judith Behar
“A Haibun on Fog” Cari Grindem-Corbett
“Robert Herrick’s Argument for the Bluebells in the Field” Deborah Doolittle

Mary Ruffin Poole American Heritage Award (David Huddle, Judge)

First Place: “Black Lace Against the Blue Sky” Deborah Doolittle
Second Place: “Autumn Rituals” Joan McLean
Third Place: “Pritchitts Fish Camp” Peggy Gambill
Honorable Mentions:
“Rain in Greenriver” Cari Grindem-Corbett
“1934: Conversations among Works in a Textile Mill” Marjorie McNamara
“The American Dream.” Catherine Entrocaso

Poetry of Love Award (Lola Haskins, Judge)

First Place: “Frank and Alice: A Love Story” Terri Kirby Erickson
Second Place: “When You Were Ten” Judith Behar
Third Place: “Sanctuary” Cari Grindem-Corbett
Honorable Mentions:
“I’ll Tell You What” Corrie Lynn White
“Beach Bird of a Pop” Amber Crews
“Longing” Bob Katrin

Katherine Kennedy McIntyre Light Verse Award (Franz Wright, Judge)

First Place: “Taking Out the Trash” Cathy C. Hall
Second Place: “Superbowl Party” Betsy Sprague
Third Place: “Parking With My Girl On A Summer Evening” Eric Weil
Honorable mentions
“The Low-down on On Last Week’s Match Games” Sharon Sharp
“Attention” Britt Kaufmann
“Stopping By Home On a Summer Afternoon.” Lynn McLure

Lyman Haiku Award (Roberta Beary, Judge)
First Place: “steady rain” Lynn McLure
Second Place: “Silent Night” Chen-ou Liu
Third Place: “daffodils” Patricia Daharsh
Honorable Mention:
“morning light on dunes-“ Cari Grindem-Corbett

Poetry of Courage Award (Simon J. Ortiz, judge)

First Place: “Petition” Anne Vilen
Second Place: “The small one I have…” Genevieve Fitzgerald
Third Place: “and the levees break on New Orleans” Marjorie McNamara
Honorable Mentions:
“When the Rooster Crows” Rosalyn F. Lomax
“The Loving Cup” MaXine Carey Harker

Caldwell Nixon Jr. Award (Sharon F. McDermott, Judge)

First Place: “Mrs. McGree’s Menagerie” Joel Shulkin
Second Place: “Between Us” Florence Weinberger
Third Place: “Gigue” Bill Griffin
Honorable Mentions:
“Water Fountain” Betsy Humphreys
“Freedom School” Susan Lefler
“Bugs Galore” Julie Stuckey

Thomas H. McDill Award (Toi Derricotte, Judge)

First Place: “Men of the Deeps” Betsy Humphreys
Second Place: “Flying Blind” Jenny Ward Anyal
Third Place: “Orientation” Amber Crews
Honorable Mentions:
“Sunset Roanoke Sound” Bill Griffin
“Soul Food” Valerie Macon
“Alberto Caeiro Speaks to Lorca of Sheep” Deborah Doolittle

Poet Laureate Award (Myrna Stone, pre-judge, Cathy Smith Bowers, final judge)
In no particular order:
1. “Mrs. Just In Case” Andrea Bates
2. “After You Tell Him It’s Over” Elizabeth Swann
3. “Eating Pizza With a Buddhist Monk” Ione O’Hara
4. “Alex” Michael Beadle
5. “Mirrored Vision” Betsy Sprague
6. “What the Venerable Bede Might Have Said” Maria Rouphail
7. “The Birdlover’s Lover” Deborah Doolittle
8. “Credo” Dave Manning
9. “Homestead Lilac” Coyla Barry
10. “13 Ways of Heaven on Earth” Scott Owens

2010 NCPS Contest Winners

A Visitor

For Lih’s mother

Shuffling between kitchen and living room,
she carries trays of sliced mangoes,
salted rice patties, and red bean sweets,
a crown of utility carefully balanced
over tragedy’s swiveling door.
She opens the paper wrappings,
hands delicate as a crocus unfolding
in the morning light. Little hands working
to part the frail chapter of circumstance
where histories float like clouds on an untouchable scrim.
A husband long dead and children long grown,
she hums now in perpetual migration
strummed by memories quiet as dusk-
notes plucked from hills overgrown with simple reasons
prying her open as stars from distant galaxies
pierce the silent circumference of night.
How roots cling to raked earth
and a culture slides down a mountain
into the heart-shaped contours of her lips
settling there in soft syllables
that ripen in her smile like tomatoes
in the scalding Taiwanese sun.
She courts her years, still a child playing dress-up,
desire toted like a feather hat or an afterthought;
a parasol sprouts from the tiny bulb of her hand,
and her eyes follow with unintended curiosity
as the palm leaves flap their giant
destinies in the window.

-ANYA RUSSIAN

2010′s NCPS Poet Laureate Award winning poem.

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2010 Winners

Adult Contests

Brockman-Campbell Book Award

• A Necklace of Bees by Dannye Romine Powell

Thomas H. McDill Award - Poems up to 60 lines

• Cinnamon by Andrea Bates

Caldwell Nixon Jr. Award - Poems for Children

• When Two Brothers Must Have Felt Like Birds by Betsy Sprague

Joanna Catherine Scott Award – Poems in Traditional Forms

• Anagoge II by MaXine Carey Harker

Mary Ruffin Poole American Heritage Award – Poems up to 32 lines, on theme of American Heritage

• Quik Stop by Debra Kaufman

Katherine Kennedy McIntyre Light Verse Award - Light verse poems up to 32 lines

• A Thank-You Note by Sheila Turnage

Lyman Haiku Award - 3-line haiku

• spring rivulets by Glenn G. Coats

Poetry of Courage Award - Poems up to 32 lines, on theme of courage or crisis

• English 1200 Visits the Library by Nancy P. Shires

Poetry of Love Award - Poems up to 32 lines, on theme of love

• Gertrude Stein Counts Three Bachelor’s Buttons by Deborah H. Doolittle

Student Contests

Travis Tuck Jordan Award – Grades 3 through 5

• Clouds by Anselmo Salazar

Joan Scott Memorial Award – Poems about the environment, grades 3 through 8

• Summer Skies by Rachel Carroll

Mary Chilton Award - Grades 6 through 8

• Prayer by Maya Gouw

Sherry Pruitt Award – Grade 9 through university undergraduate

• Newport Orphanage by Jeremy Sexton

Lyman Haiku Award - 3-line haiku, for grade 9 through university undergraduate

• Eruption of Spring by Colton Faucette