2024 Frost Farm Prize for Metrical Poetry
The 2024 contest is now complete. Thanks to all who entered! The winner and honorable mentions have been notified.
The Trustees of the Robert Frost Farm in Derry, NH, are pleased to announce that the winner of the 14th Annual Frost Farm Prize for metrical poetry is Sarah Spivey of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma for her poem, “The Dispossession.”
The 2024 Frost Farm Prize judge, Mike Juster, selected the winning poem after reading 876 anonymous entries. He had this to say about the winning poem:
“Sarah Spivey's winning poem "The Dispossession" stood out for its ambitious subject matter, its music, and its use of form. Her poem is the kind of meditation often stirred by lonely travel, but it is also an epistle rather than the typical journalistic or autobiographical poem. This choice allowed her to adopt a conversational style that Frost would have admired:
The road will curve bare as a fingerbone
into obscurity, where birds have flown,
their black wings worrying the silent sky.
But if you hear them in the wood, go by--
yes, hurry by—and do not contemplate
divergence from the easy interstate.
Close readers have also already noticed that "The Dispossession" is written in heroic couplets, the workhorse form for light verse. In order to harness the momentum of the form for a somber poem, a poet must modulate the meter and suppress some of the rhymes, which Ms. Spivey has done with great skill in this marvelous poem.”
Spivey received $1,000 and will be a featured reader at The Hyla Brook Reading Series at the Robert Frost Farm in Derry, NH on Friday, Aug. 16, 2024. The reading kicks off the 9th Annual Frost Farm Poetry Conference (Aug. 16-18, 2024).
Sarah had this reaction to winning the Frost Farm Prize: “To say I was shocked when I received the phone call would be an understatement. So many wonderful poets submit every year, and I am honored to have been chosen from among them. Robert Frost has been one of my favorite poets to read aloud since grade school, when we memorized several of his poems. More recently I have also greatly admired the Frost Society for all its work promoting the study of the humanities. For these reasons and many others, it is thrilling to receive this prize.”
Sarah Spivey is an MFA student with the University of St. Thomas and teaches at a classical Christian school.
The Dispossession
If clouds are hovering on grazing cows
and, ponderous with its sleep, morning allows
beguiling fog to warp the interstate;
if you should hear out of it, “Be still, wait;”
sanity and mortality suggest
you should not stop. Let old enchantments rest.
The road will curve bare as a fingerbone
into obscurity, where birds have flown,
their black wings worrying the silent sky.
But if you hear them in the wood, go by—
yes, hurry by--and do not contemplate
divergence from the easy interstate.
Although coyotes cry beneath the dawn,
when you have looked, their shadows will be gone.
But should you stop your car beside a hill
which slouches toward the waiting wood, you will
follow, like others who have gone before,
familiar words too lovely to ignore.
Go by, and let the old enchantments sleep.
And if you think you hear the dogwood weep,
pay no mind; that is only fallen flowers
discovering they are what time devours.
Below, the desperate thorns and bracken lie
preoccupied with excerpts of the sky,
and lower still, there stews the fungal deep
where toadstools pilfer life and blind worms creep;
and should you linger here, you will soon know
why this decaying earth should call you so.
There is a world, perhaps, past fog and road,
a world where time and busyness corrode
all mysteries into a tarnished science,
where you are spelled for corporate compliance.
But that world is not here, and if you rest
a moment, you may find you are dispossessed
of all except the worm, the flowers, the tree,
and take a bite of past eternity.
Yes, if you hear the grim coyotes cry
at dawn, they cry for you, grey passerby.
—Sarah Spivey
_____
In addition to selecting the winner, Mike Juster chose three Honorable Mentions. He had this to say about his choices:
“It was difficult to choose just three honorable mentions. Kathryn Bratt-Pfotenhauer's "River Country" is a chillingly powerful sonnet. Barbara Crane's "Icons" is a tribute to the painter Kehinde Wiley, and like the winning poem it handles a serious subject with masterful heroic couplets. David Southward is the only man to make the final four, and yet the quatrains of his "Elizabeth Siddal Rossetti" are written in a woman's voice with convincing authenticity.”
Honorable Mentions (in alphabetical order):
Kathryn Bratt-Pfotenhauer of Syracuse, New York for “River Country.”
Barbara Lydecker Crane of Somerville, Massachusetts for “Icons.”
David Southward of Milwaukee, Wisconsin for “Elizabeth Siddal Rossetti.”
Previous Frost Farm Prize Winners
2023 Brian Brodeur of Richmond, Indiana for “After Visiting a Former Student in a Psychiatric Unit” — Judge, Alfred Nicol
2022 Jean L. Kreiling of Plymouth, Massachusetts for “Antiphon“ — Judge Allison Joseph
2021 Nicolas Friedman of Syracuse, New York for “Storylines” — Judge Aaron Poochigian
2021 Michael Levers of Provo, Utah for “The Counterweight” — Judge Aaron Poochigian
2020 Jennifer 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.
