Deftly Woven

The 2024 Shann Palmer Poetry Contest | Illustrations by Carson McNamara

October 7, 2024

10:30 AM

This year the triennial James River Writers/Richmond magazine Shann Palmer Poetry Contest, which is named for the late Shann Palmer, a poet and active JRW board member, received 284 entries, submitted by 88 poets.

The judge was Amber McBride of Charlottesville, whose debut young adult novel, “Me (Moth),” was a finalist for the National Book Award and won the 2022 Coretta Scott King/John Steptoe Award for New Talent, among many other accolades. Her subsequent YA and middle grade novels were named Book of the Year by Publishers Weekly and Kirkus Reviews, among other honors. McBride’s debut adult poetry collection, “Thick With Trouble,” and a young adult Black poetry anthology she coedited, “Poemhood: Our Black Revival,” were both published earlier this year.

FIRST PLACE

The Widower

By Alison Seay, Richmond

On the porch in the sun
this man I love is worrying
the gold band loose on the bone.

We have fruit and cheese and glasses of beer
and we talk about her.

Later, he points to the place
in the liriope under a canopy of vines
where the deer have been sleeping though really

what he said was this is where
they bedded down.

Past tense of bed.
Inexact, the shape of more than one body
in the pressed grass, a secret shape.

Whether they return or not, who cares,
we know where they were,
a place now sacred and of course temporary.

Allison Seay

About the Winner

Allison Seay says her first real poetry class was an elective at Mary Washington College (now the University of Mary Washington) led by the poet Claudia Emerson, who would later win a Pulitzer Prize. “She was — and still is, really, though she has since died — my first and best mentor,” Seay says. She wrote “The Widower” in honor of Emerson; the title character is Emerson’s husband, whose friendship Seay still treasures. “All this to say that I am a lifelong student,” she says, “of hers, of his, of the deer, of the trees and grasses, a student of the shadows.” An award-winning poet whose book “To See the Queen” was published in 2013, Seay is also the mother of two young sons and serves as chaplain at St. Michael’s Episcopal School in Richmond. —Mindy Kinsey

From Amber McBride: The poet deftly weaves together the pieces of an afternoon spent with someone grieving. The strength of the poem, outside of its beauty, attention to craft and powerful extended metaphors, is in its ability to find intimacy in the seemingly mundane. Sitting on a porch with a drink observing nature — except one aspect has changed; someone has died. We don’t have to know the details because the moment is held up to the light so carefully, so clearly. The poet recognizes life is temporary, just like the pressed grass where the deer once slept. Haunting and exquisite, the poem is a eulogy on grief in six stanzas — one that finds comfort in nature, friendship and the humanity in us all. One that digs a little deeper into you each time you sit with it.

SECOND PLACE

Little Bird

By Jenna Veazey, King George

this morning, I watched a house finch fly smack||into our glass door and drop—a ruby male
swooped next to her||his sleek head tilted at her slack||body||her beak: open close||open
close||moving with silent mechanics of song||slowing||close||open||closed||I watched him watching
her||both of us waiting||because if you don’t wait and see how else will you know anything||I was
struck by how little we know||and by how little I mean me||who says everything should have
meaning?||who says you should believe it when I tell about a male bird staying with his mate until
her last breath||and maybe you want to know instead about the glass door||the proximity of
birdfeeders||where exactly were the window strike stickers||That evening, my husband will touch
my hand, thinking||how I must have felt this death so deeply||Isn’t that a poet’s job? he’ll want to
know?||But I will have already left—my inner sky filling with birds as I fled.

From Amber McBride: This stunning prose poem is both an ars poetica [i.e., a poem that explains the art of poetry] and examination of the expanse and (often) limitations of empathy. Is it the poet’s job to witness this bird funeral from start to finish, documenting it accurately? Or is it the poet’s job to walk away let the idea simmer, cry on it a bit and craft a poem that is true in what it wants to represent?

THIRD PLACE

immutable

By Stella Graham-Landau, Richmond

for a century
he sat
in the middle of traffic
staring into the glare of lights
go around me
i will not move
mounted on marble
protected by bolts glue
lies and laws
he tyrannized the skies of the city
until words like
fuck and
black lives matter and
names of lives killed by police
sprayed over and over
across his face
crotch and
down his legs
doomed his legacy

tipped on his side
strapped to a truck
hauled away
in the middle of a thunderstorm

From Amber McBride: This powerful poem waterfalls into itself with its lack of punctuation, vivid imagery and purposeful line breaks. It forces the reader to observe, look and listen. The personification of the statue and what it represents asks the reader to turn inward when contemplating how monuments can knowingly or unknow-ingly cause harm.