LINE LEVEL #11
Welcome to LINE LEVEL: Craft Lessons from Poets of Color, a monthly column in which writer, editor, and educator Joanna Acevedo zooms in on an element of craft from the work of BIPOC poets. LINE LEVEL unfolds in three parts:…
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Poetry: “Seventeen” by Chris Dahl
Chris Dahl’s “Seventeen,” is sensuous, the kind of luxuriating poem that takes its time as it unwinds, carrying the reader through a journey that ends in a kind of time capsule of youth, beauty, nostalgia and dreamy remembering—for both author…
2024 Nature & Place Second Place Winner: “Cocke County” by Kiyoko Reidy
We’ve got another winning poem on deck! Kiyoko Reidy is the Second Place Winner of Frontier Poetry‘s 2024 Nature & Place Contest. Read their inventive & provocative poem, “Cocke County,” selected by judge Flower Conroy. Here we have a poem…
Poetry: “Listening for Otters” by Jayne Marek
Jayne Marek’s “Listening for Otters,” has a restrained quality, a sense that we as readers don’t have all the information. But it’s precisely this kind of withholding that draws us into the poem. The writing is tightly controlled and sparse,…
2024 Nature & Place WINNER: “Sometimes—there’s God—so quickly.” by Zachary Scalzo
It’s time to congratulate the WINNER of the Frontier Poetry 2024 Nature & Place Contest, Zachary Scalzo. Their gripping poem, “Sometimes—there’s God—so quickly.” was selected by our judge, Flower Conroy. Here’s what Conroy has to say about the winning poem: …
Poetry: “What My Grandmother Nestles in the Earth” by Courtney DuChene
Courtney DuChene’s poem, “What My Grandmother Nestles in the Earth,” evokes a tension between the bursts of color that she evokes in the poem using floral imagery, and the fragility of human bodies and minds, focusing in particular on memory.…
Poetry: “I squeezed the world like a tangerine” by Ruby Maghoney
Ruby Maghoney invites us into a suddenly visceral space with the image of squeezing the tangerine, but then quickly pivots, pressing us as readers to juxtapose this deeply physical and intimate image with an immediate pivot to implications of loss…
2024 Nature & Place Third Place Winner: “The Pond, Early Spring” By Rebekah A. Sankey
It’s time to congratulate the Third Place Winner of Frontier Poetry‘s 2024 Nature & Place Contest, Rebekah A. Sankey. Read their arresting poem, selected by Flower Conroy, “The Pond, Early Spring.” Become enthralled with the earth as Sankey depicts nature…
LINE LEVEL #10
Welcome to LINE LEVEL: Craft Lessons from Poets of Color, a monthly column in which writer, editor, and educator Joanna Acevedo zooms in on an element of craft from the work of BIPOC poets. LINE LEVEL unfolds in three parts:…
Poetry: “first winter in iowa city” by Jeremy Teddy Karn
Jeremy Karn’s work in “first winter in iowa city,” initially feels tentative, as this speaker navigates the boundaries of this new relationship and the boundaries of intimacy and culture that seem to fluctuate between speaker and subject, but by the…
