NaPoMo Winner & Finalists

We are thrilled to announce the winner, finalists, and semi-finalists of our annual National Poetry Month competition. Each year, we dedicate an entire issue to poetry, with all finalists being published and the winner receiving an additional $1,000.

We are so thankful to everyone who submitted this year. This has been a difficult time for so many people, but many of you still found time for poetry, and we were honored to receive so many excellent submissions. We wish we could publish many more, but ultimately we had to settle on a list of semi-finalists, finalists, and one winner. To all of you who took the time to submit to us, thank you.

The ten finalists and winner will be released as a digital issue during National Poetry Month, April of 2021. To learn more about our NaPoMo issue, click here.

Semi-finalists:

Cassandra Cleghorn, "Her Need to Hear Only the Lesson Learned"

Jessica Dionne, "Self-Portrait as the Moth Floating in My Water Cup," "Please Use Your Inside Voice," and "A Hunger in 3 Cities:"

Dante di Stefano, "stand back and stand by"

Natalie Havlina, "Spider Veins"

Matthew Hawk, "Apollo’s Archaic Torso"

Siew David Hii, "The Heart, the Mangoes, another Heart, Night"

Bill Hollands, "ICYMI" and "The Crocodile Pit at the Serpentarium, Miami, Florida"

Trevor Ketner, "[Thus can my love excuse the slow offence]"

Julia Kolchinsky Dasbach, "Week 11: Fig"

Susan Meserve, "On the Phone"

Mary Moore, "Instructions To Self"

Amy Stengel, "After Reading Walden for the 5th Time"

Ayesha Shibli, "The Last Person and My Mother and I Resurrect Our Dead"

Sarah Snyder, "Second Knee Replacement"

Lana Spendl, "Through the Window"

Leslie Williams, "Over Leaf and Still Life with Lobster" and "Nautilus"

Finalists:

Jessica Dionne, "Swamp Mama"

Dante di Stefano, "Eating Lucky Charms Straight Out of the Box in the Middle of the Night, I Suddenly Want to Be a Lorca Poem"

S. M. Ellis, "My Father as Graven Image"

Adam J. Gellings, "The Half of It"

Kathryn Haemmerle, "March Propositions"

Julia Kolchinsky Dasbach, "Week 14: Lemon"

Susan Meserve, "Heat Wave"

Ayesha Shibli, "My Father Teaches Me How to Open a Pomegranate"

Sarah Snyder, "Ginger Roots"

Leslie Williams, "Connective Tissue"

Winner:

Cassandra Cleghorn, "You Ask What I Was Like Back Then"