A Mormon literary backcountry where words and place come together.

 

 

 

 

Archive for the 'WIZ's Spring Poetry Runoff' Category

Thank you, 2011 Spring Poetry Runoff participants!

Tuesday, May 31st, 2011

I’d just like to say again how, in both quantity and quality, this year’s Spring Poetry Runoff exceeded my hopes. I’m deeply grateful for everyone’s participation and consider hosting such an outpouring of spring passion a high honor.  Seeing writers come together to play and ply their craft has been inspiring, and my hopes for [...]

Winners of WIZ’s 2011 Spring Poetry Runoff Contest Announced

Monday, May 23rd, 2011

It’s been a privilege and delight for Wilderness Interface Zone to host a spectacular flourish of spring poetry during this year’s Spring Poetry Runoff.  In the kick-off post, I called for a show of green language, of creative élan and prospect-opening words.  I asked for poetry that contained the recombinant stuff of fertile, world-making expression [...]

Change in date: Announcement of winners of Spring Poetry Runoff delayed

Tuesday, May 17th, 2011

The Spring Poetry Runoff Awards winners will be announced next Monday, May 23.   I hope everyone can hold out that long, but unexpected delays and the quality of the poems submitted have made selecting a winner for the Admin Award a very tough choice.
In the meantime, our normally scheduled postings will continue.

Vote for your favorite 2011 Spring Poetry Runoff poems

Monday, May 9th, 2011

Thanks to a gorgeous stream of entries, WIZ’s 2011 Spring Poetry Runoff Celebration ran even deeper into the season than did last year’s.  And indeed, this year’s Runoff has been an inspiring show of green and fertile language, above and beyond what I had hoped. In fact, I’ve been wowed, not just by the craftsmanship [...]

WIZ’s 2011 Spring Poetry Runoff Contest and Celebration tapers off

Thursday, May 5th, 2011

We’ve had a chilly April in southeast Utah, but this year, my neighbor’s barn swallows and the local colonies of cliff swallows returned to their traditional nesting sites two or three weeks earlier than they did during the past two springs.  A few hundred feet down the road at a cattle pond that drains an [...]

Toasting my funerals away, Spring 2006 by Gabriel Aresti Jr.

Wednesday, May 4th, 2011

We are celebrating that spring came over and we did not even make a move
Move, he says to me, we need to keep moving
We’re moving, the ground is moving behind our feet
You know what I’m gonna do when I am older?
Nuclear weapons
I’m gonna do nuclear weapons
I’m gonna do nuclear weapons with geraniums
See those geraniums how [...]

Sprung Rhythm (A Pagan Hymn) by Jonathon Penny

Tuesday, May 3rd, 2011

I could never make something so perfect, so precise
As midway between summer’s cauldron fire and winter’s ice
A revving of the engines, an adjustment of the eyes
From bleak to bright and coloured light. In short, it’s rather nice.
This season is a halfway house, an opening of blinds,
A rooster season, and a rood awakening of mind
To worlds [...]

March Morning, New York City by David Passey

Monday, May 2nd, 2011

At last the world leans the cobbled street
between Church and City Hall
in line with the sun.
The host of sparrows in the barren aralia vines
catches fire again, flickering and dancing so quick,
like a scaffolding of glad candles.
The forsythia hedge at the Mansion gate–
yesterday a row of tattered sticks,
today a bustling brass parade.
And we, the grey coated [...]

Bobcat by Steven L. Peck

Friday, April 29th, 2011

When the bobcat
flashed angrily through
the headlights
of Alan’s famous
Mustang,
we sliced the
silence to a primitive
stop and wild
eyed,
grabbed the
.22s resting cold and
anxious on
the back seat
Like
hunting hawks
dove
from the car
wings folded
The canyon echoed the crack
crack, crack as we fired
at shadows
We didn’t know then,
the cat
could
have cured us
and the quiet Spring night
soothed
our burning
________________________________________________________________
To read more of Steve’s poetry and see his bio, [...]

Frosty Kisses by Nathan Meidell

Thursday, April 28th, 2011

Warming rays over frost kissed flowers
Bids cold love depart into a smiling sun,
Enticed thereby to air and cloudy bowers
Where icy winds and snow have lately run.
An earth in step with brimming clouds above
Renews a onetime halted suitor’s dance,
Accepting rain’s entreating poet’s love,
Penned once again in arcing rainbow’s glance.
Cold voices from this blanket world rise up
To [...]