One of ours awarded honorable mention in the November IBPC

Congratulations to About Poetry Forum poet Melissa Resch (BostonArtist), whose poem “An Endangered Species” was selected by the current team of judges, Hélène Cardona and John FitzGerald, as the only honorable mention in last month’s InterBoard Poetry Competition. Melissa is a long-time Poetry Forum member who’s been away and just recently came back. Several of her earlier poems have represented our Forum in the IBPC, and one of them, “The Road” from her series Seven Wonders of One Woman’s Existence, won third place in March 2003.

Besides Melissa’s honorable mention, the judges chose three winning poems for November:

• In first place, “Russian Crucifixes” by Emily Violet Swithins, selected for its “strong imagery and command of language, with a great rhythm and flow.”
• In second place, “My Father’s Family Tree” by Anna Yin, a poem that “tells a great story, unique, yet universal.”
• In third place, “only waitress at the truck stop who never uses the cash register” by Justin Hyde, a “concise and compelling... almost cinematic” portrait.

More on the IBPC:
General information
Requirements for IBPC nominees
Anthology of the monthly IBPC winning poems
Archive of poems entered in the IBPC from our Poetry Forum
Background information, poem links and book-buying links for current IBPC judges Hélène Cardona and John FitzGerald