Wilderness Interface Zone

I would like to thank personally each participant in the 2010 Spring Poetry Runoff Celebration.  You helped make the Runoff a very successful event this year, not just for me but for readers and other participants.  I hope everyone enjoyed the poetry and all-around gathering of talent as much as I did.  The list of people-profoundly-thanked includes, in alphabetical order:

Gabriel Aresti Jr. for his three poems, “Spring-Eh-Field,” “Nospringland,” and “What the Mormons Taught Me About Spring and More”

Travis Burnham, for his poem “The Morning View”

Tyler Chadwick, for his three poems “Te Kore,” “Pacific: Mateu, Matem,” and “Across the Hokianga (Tanka)”

Harlow Clark, for his found poem “Easter Sermons”

Nani Furse, for her two poems “Spring Outing” and “At the Enterprise Reservoir Dam”

greenfrog, for his spring haiku

Warren Hatch, for his poem “Pruning the Blood Plum Tree”

Arthur Hatton, for contributing his song “You’re Better Than That”

Karen Kelsay, for her three poems, “Handmaidens of Spring,” “In the Sweet Alone,” and “Waiting for Spring”

Lance Larsen, for contributing his poem “Rough Translation”

Mary-Celeste Lewis, for her poem “Happy”

Nathan Meidell, for his poem “Softer Joy”

Alan Mitchell, for his poem “Winter Relapse”

Angela Morrison, for her poem “Sonoran Atonement”

Davey Morrison, for his three poems, “February,” “Like Urban Tumbleweed,” and “You Rustle Me”

Jon Ogden, for his poem “Seasonal Ritual”

Polly Parkinson for her poem, “milkweed”

Sandra Skouson for her three poems, “Beginning to Rain: At Monument Valley,” “Girl Without a Mother to Her Big Brother,” and “Naming Spring”

It has been an honor and delight to meet and work with each of you.  Feel free to continue to contribute nature-themed work to WIZ and to visit often.  Also, tremendous thanks to WIZ’s readers, to those who contributed haiku to the haiku chain, to commenters, and to all those who participated in the voting.  Come back anytime and throw another log on the fire.

The 2011 vernal equinox arrives Sunday, March 20th.  We’ll be running next year’s Spring Poetry Runoff Celebration starting on or around Friday, March 18th,  so keep that date in mind and plan to join next year’s versefest, either as contestants or non-contest contributors.  Music and other work poetry-related will also be welcome.  The contest will never be a formal affair, its intent being to provide a place for a communal celebration of spring’s arrival rather than apply the starch of an academic event.   Perhaps one day I’ll have more blog members to argue with over choices of winners, but ’til then it’ll just be lil’ ol’ me.  My hope is one day to be able to offer more prizes and other incentives for participation, as per the Navajo tradition of gifting all participants with thank-you baskets and other goods.  Currently, WIZ is on a (very limited) budget, so we give what we’ve got.  This year the poets were the ones spreading a generous and shining banquet.

Excellent work all, and a wonderful show of public interest and support.  As I believe the condition of human language to exert important influence upon the condition of the Earth, I appreciate the creative, engaging, possibility-producing qualities of the words offered here as good acts of stewardship on each participant’s part.  Very heartening.