2026-27 Poems

Poetry in Plain Sight: April 2026-March 2027

48 poems were selected for the current Poetry in Plain Sight program year:

April 2026
  • Susan Spalt: “Without Poetry”
  • Joseph Bathanti: “In This Ether”
  • Christina Ruotolo: “Sing…Her”
  • Robert Hill Long: “Art and Labor”
May 2026
  • Dave Russo: “How Oak Trees Spread Across North America”
  • Anna Lena Phillips Bell: “Paean”
  • John Hoppenthaler: “And Also, the Floods”
  • Anne Emler: “hummingbird haiku”
June 2026
  • Kit Wienert: “Sense of the Past”
  • Morrow Dowdle: “White Deer”
  • Becky Gould Gibson: “Perhaps the Rain”
  • Ross White: “Young Adult”
July 2026
  • Michael Boccardo: “How to be a Force of Nature: Volcano”
  • Jenny Hubbard: “Rescue”
  • Caroline Kenna: “Feast for the Eyes”
  • Scott Owens: “Cicada”
August 2026
  • Alys Traylor: “By the Gaslight”
  • Caroline Grinton: “I Close My Eyes”
  • Vicky Teng: “At the Super Global Market”
  • Maxwell Wei: “Harvesting a Year’s Worth”
September 2026
  • Kenneth Chamlee: “Classified”
  • Pam Baggett: “Grandmother”
  • Paige Gilchrist: “September”
  • Kathy Weisfeld: “Graveside”
October 2026
  • Debra Kaufman: “Skunk as Wallflower”
  • Karen Luke Jackson: “Feast on these Things”
  • Chris Abbate: “Cold Front”
  • Claire Hermann: “Persimmons”
November 2026
  • Dean Marshall Tuck: “TV Static”
  • Maura High: “After a Controlled Burn, Mop-Up”
  • Jane Shlensky: “Of a Mind”
  • Beth Copeland: “Late November”
December 2026
  • Valerie Macon: “Midnight Train”
  • S.L. Cockerille: “Reasonable Mourning”
  • Nancy Martin-Young: “Exuberance”
  • Joanne Durham: “Starfish Lane”
January 2027
  • Janis Harrington: “Snowshoeing in the Italian Alps”
  • Katie Seymour: “Conspiracy of Truth”
  • Lora Hawkins: “Heisenberg Tells Us”
  • Michael Pope: “Cardinal”
February 2027
  • Mary Alice Dixon: “After You Hear the Greening”
  • Liza Wolff-Francis: “Becoming Sculpture”
  • Bridget Bell: “All These Beautiful Bodies”
  • Doida Gilmer: “Darkwalkers”
March 2027
  • Paul Jones: “Red Cockaded Woodpecker”
  • Florence Nash: “Uneasy Season”
  • Bridget Baker: “Being/Becoming”
  • Jackson Benson: “Good Veins”

About the Selections

128 North Carolina poets submitted 334 poems for consideration. The poems were judged anonymously by Karen Mittet and James Wyshynski.