Bright futures ahead

by Nancy Moen

Writing competitions spark creativity for students of prose and poetry. Three recent awards demonstrate the variety of competitions that MU doctoral students are winning.

First-book Prize

Jessica Garratt looks for surprises in writing, but the tables were turned on her recently when she was the one who was surprised. "Stunned," was the description she gave after learning she had won a distinguished award in competition against published poets, including some with multiple books.

Garratt, who is poetry editor of MU's The Missouri Review, received the 2008 Agha Shahid Ali Poetry Prize for her manuscript Fire Pond. The University of Utah Press will publish the book in 2009.

"The Agha Shahid Ali Prize is among the top competitions offered by university presses in the United States," says MU English Professor Scott Cairns. Garratt's win is especially impressive because Fire Pond is her first book.

In her poems, Garratt likes to triangulate elements and find her way among them. "Fascicle," the final poem in Fire Pond, weaves the language and occasion of Easter and Lent into ruminations on a love interest, into the narrative of a scholar trying to re-assemble Emily Dickinson's sewn bundles of poems, and into language and images drawn from Dickinson's work.

"I find that working this way affords me more surprises and sometimes makes me say things I didn't expect to say, which is always a goal for me in writing poems," she says.

Garrett will receive a $1,000 cash prize and will give a reading in the University of Utah's Guest Writers Series.

Fun with Travel Writing

As grand-prize winner of Hostelling International's Adventures in Hostelling contest, Elizabeth Langemak won a round-trip plane ticket to a worldwide destination of her choice.

A jury of professional travel writers and travel-industry representatives chose her piece from the personal stories of travelers about their experiences in hostelling. The entries could be funny, serious, romantic or touching, as long as they were true.

In her entry, "Broken English," Langemak wrote about the language barriers she encountered at a hostel in Barcelona, where signage used what could best be described as creative English. For example, a sign on the bathroom door read: This service after midnight is for emergency use. Please don't explain the noisy history of the day.

Langemak's interest soars when she encounters such language disembodiment. Her piece works through everyone's attempts to make sense of language that has been separated from its intended meaning.

"Broken English" will appear in Hostelling International's 50th-anniversary commemorative publication, and Langemak will use her airline tickets to enjoy new travel adventures in Paris and Amsterdam.

Pocket-size Poetry

John Estes won a National Chapbook Fellowship from the Poetry Society of America for his collection of poems titled Swerve. Chapbooks are pocket-size booklets.

Distinguished poet C.K. Williams, winner of such honors as a Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award, judged the competition, which is open to writers who have not published a full-length poetry collection.

Williams noted that many of the poems in Swerve follow the tradition of dramatic observations — meticulously observed recountings of the mores and morals of individuals in intimate situations, particularly family relations, as well as their emotional and intellectual repercussions.

Estes says he didn't choose the subjects of his poetry for Swerve. "I write out of, or within, the matter of my life, and so other choices — marriage, children, dogs, etc. — selected for me certain themes that assert themselves in the poems."

Estes received a $1,000 prize, publication of his chapbook and the opportunity to read in New York with the competition judges and three other chapbook winners.

Links:

Jessica Garratt | Agha Shahid Ali Prize
Elizabeth Langemak | Adventures in Hostelling content
John Estes | National Chapbook Fellowship

Department of English
Creative Writing Program

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