Announcing the Winner of the HFR Inaugural Poetry Contest
Hayden’s Ferry Review Inaugural Poetry Contest Results! Winner: Jessica Smith, for “Valentine”. Runner-up: Juliana Chang, for “The Most Taiwanese Thing About Me.” List of Finalists: Hajjar Baban, Amy Bobeda, Trace DePass, Whitney DeVos, Majda Gama, Huan He, féi hernandez , Kelly Hoffer, Karah Kemmerly, Alyson Kissner, Stephanie Oesch, Brenna Womer, Sarah Yanni
After an exciting deliberation process and reviewing many submissions, we are proud to announce the winner, runner-up, and finalists of the Hayden’s Ferry Review Inaugural Poetry Contest. We’re so grateful for those who trusted us with their poems, and we’re eternally thankful to Jari Bradley for being our final judge and selecting the winner and runner-up from our list of finalists. Thank you to everyone who took part and submitted poems! You helped make this a wonderful and difficult decision.
THE WINNER
Jessica Smith, for “Valentine”
Comments by judge Jari Bradley:
“This is a great lyric poem that illuminates the many different versions of love/the heart, but gets at the core of the two in that very last stanza. It’s something that feels very timely, this utterance of ‘I love you, I love you, I want you to live.’”
RUNNER-UP
Juliana Chang, for “the most Taiwanese thing about me”
Comments by judge Jari Bradley:
“The set up of this poem and then reaching the volta in the last stanza was powerful. It made me consider just exactly how we define ourselves and if stripped of the obvious cultural associations of ourselves, what remains? That maybe in some way we could exist as an ecosystem all our own, one that we spend a lifetime trying to discover.”
FINALISTS
Hajjar Baban
Amy Bobeda
Trace DePass
Whitney DeVos
Majda Gama
Huan He
féi hernandez
Kelly Hoffer
Karah Kemmerly
Alyson Kissner
Stephanie Oesch
Brenna Womer
Sarah Yanni
Poems selected in this competition will appear in HFR 69, our fall issue. Thank you again to everyone who entered, and congratulations to Jessica, Juliana, and the rest of our finalists!