Comments by judge Elena Karina Byrne: “Pollution and deforestation, this poem’s overall important theme thickens in our veins where, really ‘only mud will swim’ with Rachel Carson’s ghost. The lines ‘Well-wishers float on their backs / fore-cast in a logger’s chagrin’ and ‘iridescent fish are slipped inside / already thick pockets,’ using assonance and internal rhyme, musically target the poem’s underlying tone. Image for image, the importance of this geo-political idea successfully veers from didacticism.”