Our theme for February’s contest was “Hope” and our judge was Finn Bille. Out of 7 entries, our winner is KB Ballentine with her poem “March.”
KB Ballentine’s seventh collection, Edge of the Echo, is scheduled to launch in the Spring of 2021 with Iris Press. Her earlier books can be found with Blue Light Press, Middle Creek Publishing, and Celtic Cat Publishing. Published in Crab Orchard Review and Haight-Ashbury Literary Journal, among others, her work also appears in anthologies including In Plein Air (2017) and Carrying the Branch: Poets in Search of Peace (2017). Learn more at www.kbballentine.com. Congratulations, KB!
March; by KB Ballentine
Rain and wind strip
the last snow, edges of ice
singing into the brooks.
They tousle the roots
of willows, call back
the robin and bluebird.
Day and night collide,
until light reaches
into the soul of the land,
urges seed, thorn, petal,
all of us warming under soft,
softer touch.
March’s contest theme is “Endurance.”
Our judge will be John C. Mannone, assisted by Ann Thornfield-Long and Mark Anderson. John C. Mannone has poems in the North Dakota Quarterly, Le Menteur, Blue Fifth Review, Poetry South, Baltimore Review, New England Journal of Medicine, and others. His poetry won the Dwarf Stars Award (2020) and Impressions of Appalachia Creative Arts Contest (2020). Also, he was the recipient of the Carol Oen Memorial Fiction Prize (2020) and the Joy Margrave Award (2015, 2017) for creative nonfiction. He was awarded a Jean Ritchie Fellowship (2017) in Appalachian literature and served as the celebrity judge for the National Federation of State Poetry Societies (2018). His latest of three collections, Flux Lines, is forthcoming from Linnet’s Wings Press (2021). He edits poetry for Abyss & Apex and other journals. A former CWG president and retired physics professor, John lives between Knoxville and Chattanooga, Tennessee.
You must be logged in to post a comment.