We are very excited to announce that Tracey Knapp, of San Francisco, California, has won the 42 Miles Press Poetry Award for her manuscript, Mouth. The award includes a $1,000 prize in addition to the publication of her book by 42 Miles Press in September 2015. Tracey will give a reading at Indiana University South Bend upon publication. Congratulations, Tracey!
Tracey studied art, English and poetry at Syracuse University, Ohio University and Boston University. She grew up in upstate New York, but presently lives in San Francisco, where she works as a graphic designer. Her poems have been anthologized in Best New Poets 2008 and 2010, and have appeared in Five Points, New Ohio Review, The Carolina Quarterly, The Minnesota Review and elsewhere. Tracey has received scholarships from The Tin House Writers’ Workshop and the Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fund. Mouth is her first full-length collection of poems.
A Poem from Mouth:
DIFFICULTIES
I fell asleep in the grocery line while
waiting to buy you a ham. I was waiting
for the right moment to tell you.
I told you about my first time in
Cincinnati, the man on the bus
who smelled of formaldehyde.
I can still feel his wool jacket
scratching against my bare arm.
I can barely feel my fingers.
It’s so cold that the whiskers
on my dog look like icicles. We
are walking towards the sun’s last
attempt. The snow is stacked so high
but my dog begins digging like there’s
an enormous flank of steak beneath,
and what does he pull up but his old
squeaky whale! We hadn’t seen it since
summer. It’s been a difficult winter.
It’s been difficult to smoke pot
with my accountant. He tells me
it’s not the sixties, and it’s not the first
time I’ve heard that. The first time I heard
about your sick cat, I tried to call but
I heard you were turning yourself
into a grain of sand. I have turned
you into a grain of sand.
This is the first time I can honestly
say that. The first glass of wine
was followed by the next and now
it’s the first Monday at this new
desk, the first Monday I haven’t spent
the evening loathing my thighs
over a glass of wine. Where there’s
self-loathing, there’s yourself,
and then the one bright thing
underneath that makes life
worth digging for.
* first published in Best New Poets, 2008
2014 Finalists and Semi-Finalists list:
Admussen, Nick – “Fly or Flight”
Aliperti, Pia – “Solitude Must Share My Solitude”
*Berlin, Monica – “Nostalgia for a World Where We Can Live”
*Bursk, Christopher – “Enough for Any Mortal”
Chambers, Ashley – “The People I Make”
*Coutley, Lisa Fay – “tether”
Deming, Lynn – “In the Honeycomb Of Bone”
Finnell, Dennis – “Bright Containers”
Garcia, Kim – “The Brighter House”
Gottesman, Les – “The Humiliations”
Gutstein, Dan – “Cent / R.I.P. / et al.”
Kanke, Jennifer Schomburg – “Crash Course in the Philosophy of Passion”
*Kaplan, Dan – “instant killer wig”
Keniston, Ann – “Lament / Praise”
*Kuperman, Jaimee – “A Day at the Gene Pool”
Lavers, Michael – “The Theory of Everything”
*Lawless, Gregory – “I’ve Seen Thee Far Away”
Malboeuf, Jennie – “Heavy Animals”
Matthews, Clay – “Four-Way Lug Wrench”
McDowell, Gary L. – “Mysteries in a World that Thinks There Are None”
*Moran, Patrick – “There Are Things We Live Among”
*Myers, Gabrielle – “The Hive”
*Nelson, Dustin Luke – “Activity, Group”
*Pugh, Megan – “Whipsaw”
Rathkamp, Josh – “In Response”
Rees, Elizabeth – “What to Pack, What to Carry”
Ruzkowski, Andrew – “Don’t Be Scared the Light is Perfect”
Schlaifer, Stephanie Ellis – “Clarkston Street Polaroids”
Sereno, Prartho – “my work with elephants”
*Staley, Tim – “Lost on My Own Street”
* denotes finalist
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