Winners chosen in the June InterBoard Poetry Competition

Judge Aaron Wellborn has tapped into several very different streams of poetrymaking in choosing the winners of the June IBPC: “T.J.,” by Yolanda Calderon-Horn, which inspired him to marvel at “its willingness to let us inhabit the moment of a coincidence coming together, with all the disorientation, alertness, and wonder of the speaker--and without explaining too much”; “Last Minute Chore,” by Jim Fowler, a 14-line elegy, a pared-down short-line sonnet carrying surprising humor in “spartan simplicity”; “Old Silverware on Parade,” by John Eivaz, a free-associative tumble of thoughts in which the poet’s imagination is free to “dismantle, up-end, and disturb” the language “in order to show off the more plastic properties of words.” Wellborn also made honorable mention of a poem whose “careful construction” captures something “so delicate, so ephemeral... so fragile” in poetic symmetry: “On Finding Trilliums” by Kathy Paupore.

Related resources:
About the IBPC
Anthology of winning poems