Tarantula Prize
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Announcing the Tarantula Prize for Poetry 2019-2020 Winner! |
We are pleased to announce that Nicky Beer has selected, Suzanne Richardson’s poem, "My Husband Chopped My Hands Off", which will be published in the new issue of Pilgrimage. She will receive the prize of $250.
Here is the Judge’s Note for "My Husband Chopped My Hands Off":
What compelled me about this poem is how masterfully crafted it is throughout. When the speaker initially tries to describe the act of violence committed against her, the metaphors stutter as she conveys the image of her severed hands—“Like two lumps of sugar/ two rocks/two oranges/two books/two fish”—as if to settle on only one would be unbearable, would be to accept the atrocity. And the trauma itself becomes externalized as the “robot” that has replaced her hands, a kind of animate representation of PTSD (note the skilled use of enjambment here as well): “He put metal between / me and the world so I cannot touch it. I cannot feel / at home.” And further on, the reader becomes complicit in their witnessing of this violence: “You thought you knew the story when it started, / but then it really went somewhere different. // Then it really surprised you.” And yet, the speaker ultimately dreams a future for her lost hands (“I imagine them flying through the sky, no longer weighed down.” The poem ends not with melodrama, or sentimentality, but with a redemptive faith in the imagination.
We also want to congratulate our finalists, who will also be published in our upcoming issue of Pilgrimage:
-Gerardo Pacheco Matus, "Border Town Poem"
-John Fry, "I’m Moving in with the Mourning Doves"
We want to thank everyone for entering our contest, for trusting us with your wonderful work, and for supporting Pilgrimage.
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Code of Ethics
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Pilgrimage believes that intent to act ethically, clarity of guidelines, and transparency of process form the foundation of an ethical contest. To that end, we agree to 1) conduct our contests as ethically as possible and to address any unethical behavior on the part of our readers, judges, or editors; 2) to provide clear and specific contest guidelines—defining conflict of interest for all parties involved; and 3) to make the mechanics of our selection process available to the public.
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Selection Process
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1st Round of Judging: Blind read by editors. Finalists will then be forwarded to the contest judge for the second round of judging.
2nd Round of Judging: Blind read by contest judge. Judges change on a yearly
basis.
Conflicts of Interest: Anyone with affiliation with the final judge is ineligible to enter.
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2019 Contest is now Closed
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