2021 Frost Farm Prize for Metrical Poetry
Thanks to all who entered our contest! The 2021 contest is now complete. The winners have been notified.
For the first time, we have named two prize winners: Nicholas Friedman of Syracuse, New York, for “Storylines,” and Michael Lavers of Provo, Utah for “The Counterweight.” Both received a $1,000 prize, an invitation to read at the Frost Farm, and a scholarship to attend the 2021 Frost Farm Poetry Conference.
A technical issue with Submittable initially prevented the judge from reading a portion of the entries. Unfortunately, this wasn't noticed until after a winner had been announced. The only acceptable solution was to ask our judge to read the unread entries and name a second winner.
Every entry was read and considered by the judge. Additionally, we have put in place procedures to ensure this doesn't happen again.
If your entry was not selected as the winner, we hope you will consider entering again in 2022. The contest plays an important role in supporting poetry activities at the Robert Frost Farm in Derry, New Hampshire.
Nicholas Friedman
The 2021 Frost Farm Prize judge, Aaron Poochigian, said this about the winning entry, “I chose this poem as a winner because, in addition to its formal perfection in loose iambics, it struck me as packing the greatest emotional punch. I need to be ‘blown away,’ and this poem did it.”
Friedman is the author of Petty Theft, winner of The New Criterion Poetry Prize. His poems have appeared in The New York Times, POETRY, Yale Review, and other venues. A former Wallace Stegner Fellow and Jones Lecturer at Stanford University, he is also the recipient of a Ruth Lilly Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation. He lives with his wife and son in Syracuse, NY.
"I'm delighted and honored to be the recipient of this year's Frost Farm Prize,” said Friedman. “My deep gratitude to Aaron Poochigian for finding merit in this poem."
STORYLINES
The promise of something harder than our lives
calls to us from a dark screen and delivers
pluming explosions; a boy dumped in a creek;
vast wildfires; noirish conspiracies.
The premise is simple: Whatever might go wrong
can’t happen without some added suffering.
A plague befalls the poorest parishes
as if to say this, too, could be made worse—
the way, last week, you brushed your mother’s hair,
forgiving her when, politely, she admitted
I’m sorry, I don’t know you and blinked off,
blinked on again, and said, So glad you’re here.
Tonight, we watch as a warship slowly sinks
in enemy waters. And when the crew is saved,
we think, What’s this? Then learn the boyish captain
broke orders, stayed aboard to scuttle the ship
and its intelligence. And this makes sense.
—Nicholas Friedman
_____
Michael Lavers
Michael Lavers is the author of After Earth, published by the University of Tampa Press. His poems have appeared inPloughshares, AGNI, Southwest Review, Best New Poets 2015, TriQuarterly, The Georgia Review, and elsewhere. He has been awarded the University of Canberra Vice-Chancellor's International Poetry Prize, the Moth Poetry Prize, and the Bridport Poetry Prize. Together with his wife, the writer and artist Claire Åkebrand, and their two children, he lives in Provo, Utah, and teaches at Brigham Young University.
Michael Levers said "My sincere thanks to Aaron Poochigian and to everyone at the Frost Farm for this award. I remember making a pilgrimage (no other word will do) to the Frost Farm as a young man and being inspired by the spirit of the place as much as by Frost's poetry. It's a thrill and honor to be part of an organization that does so much to keep poetry alive and well."
The judge had this to say about the winning poem: “In five effortless quatrains, “The Counterweight” shows, instead of telling, what it is for someone at an early age to lose a loved one. The scene described is so haunting that it will stay with me for good.”
The Counterweight
Then at the end she was truly thin
a shadow cast by her disease.
The sheer grey sheet that was her skin
draped over bones, torn by IVs
that wouldn’t take. She lost her hair.
We saw the face beneath her face.
Some surf, some dark conspiracy of air
eroded her, taking her place.
Then at the end her left arm rose
in spasm, tied to unseen string,
and at its full and stiff height froze,
pulled by some other plummeting.
I didn’t know since I was small,
how for a given mass to rise
a more than equal mass must fall;
and that forever now the sky’s
vast grace, once terrible and grand,
was gone, had suddenly descended,
the whole smashed edifice her hand,
while still alive, had kept suspended.
—Michael Lavers
In addition to selecting the winners, Aaron Poochigian chose the following Finalists:
Finalists (in alphabetical order)
"Toward a Thought About the Beautiful," by Dan Brown, Baldwin, NY
"White Sands," by Nicholas Friedman, Syracuse, NY
“Nocturne,” by Mary Greco, Seacliff NY
"ECONDUIT," by Joe McGuire, Boston, KY
“Legion,” by Eric Meub, Pasadena, CA
“Coda,” by Michael Mulvihill, Stauton, VA
Previous Prize Winners:
2020 Jennifer Davis Michael of Sewanee, Tennessee for “Forty Trochees” — Judge Rachel Hadas
2019 David Southward of Milwaukee, Wisconsin for “Mary’s Visit” — Judge Bruce Bennet
2018 Susan de Sola of the Netherlands, for “Buddy” — Judge Melissa Balmain
2017 Caitlin Doyle of Cincinnati, Ohio, for "Wishes" --Judge Deborah Warren
2016 James Najarien of Auburndale, Massachussets for "Dark Ages" -- Judge David Rothman
2015 Kevin Durkin of Santa Monica, California for "Meteor Crater" - Judge Joshua Mehigan
2014 Rob Wright of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania for "Meetings with my Father" - Judge Rhina Espaillat
2013 Caki Wilkinson of Sewanee, Tennessee, for "Arts and Crafts" - Judge Catherine Tufariello
2012 Richard Meyer of Mankato, Minnesota, for, "Fieldstone" - Judge Richard Wakefield
2011 Sharon Fish Mooney of Coshocton, Ohio for "Dimly Burning Wicks" - Judge Bill Baer
About the Frost Farm’s Hyla Brook Poets
The Frost Farm was home to the poet and his family from 1900-1909. The Hyla Brook Poets, a 501(c)(3), started in 2008 as a monthly poetry workshop. In March 2009, the Hyla Brook Reading Series launched with readings by emerging poets as well as luminaries such as Maxine Kumin, David Ferry, Linda Pastan, and Sharon Olds. The Frost Farm Prize was introduced in 2010, followed by the inaugural Frost Farm Poetry Conference in 2015.
