I’m very happy to announce the result of the 2024 Stephen Dunn Prize for poetry. The winning poem is “Poem in which Emily Dickinson Scolds Me,” by Betsy Sholl, selected by our poetry judge for this issue, Andrea Cohen. She notes:
Under the guise of taking dictation from Emily Dickinson, this poem offers sage counsel: “Don’t sing/just because they ask you.” And: “Dare to dwell roofless.” There’s a loveliness here, via questions and answers, that reminds us to stand (and write) where lightning might find us.
Thank you so much, Andrea Cohen, for being this year’s poetry judge, and kudos to everyone who took part in the contest. We received an extraordinary breadth and depth of entries, and it was difficult to narrow the field to the pieces that appear in this issue. I hope these poems— winner, finalists, and editor’s picks— make their way into your stack of memorable summer reading. You will discover among them a critique of colonialism through the lens of a queen’s pets, a tragic reimagining of the Central American folkloric figure La Llorona, a liturgical meditation on losses experienced by the transgender community, and so very much more.
–Robbie Gamble
Robbie Gamble’s essays have appeared in Scoundrel Time, Pangyrus, Pithead Chapel, Under the Gum Tree and Tahoma Literary Review. He was a 2019 Peter Taylor Fellow at the Kenyon Summer Writers Workshop. He worked many years as a nurse practitioner caring for homeless people in Boston, and now divides his time between Massachusetts and Vermont.
