This year, 398 poets submitted a total of 986 poems, transporting us to places both natural—“mist, some trees, two deer”—and unnatural: a freeway interchange with a chopper hovering overhead. Coming from all over the country—Texas, South Carolina, and beyond—the poems showed how some places, while perhaps physically left behind, never really leave us.

This year’s winning poem, selected by Zócalo poetry editor Colette LaBouff and the editorial staff, evokes an almost, but not quite, imaginary place called “the State of Jefferson” as well as Interstate 5, a thruway that runs parallel to the Pacific Ocean and travels the entire length of the West Coast.

We’re thrilled to award the $500 Zócalo Public Square Poetry Prize to Erica Goss, a California native who now lives in Eugene, Oregon. She will deliver a public reading of her poem at Zócalo’s annual Book Prize award ceremony on May 2 at the National Center for the Preservation of Democracy in Los Angeles. Please see more details on the public reading here.

Erica Goss is a poet, a teacher, and co-founder of Media Poetry Studio, a poetry and film camp for girls. From 2013-2016, she was the Poet Laureate of Los Gatos, where she organized many town activities around poetry and hosted Word to Word, a Show About Poetry on KCAT Cable TV. She has published four books of poetry, most recently Night Court.

Her Zócalo Poetry Prize-winning poem is below, followed by a brief interview.
 

   The State of Jefferson

    Trucks shuffle in the slow lane.
    Mt. Shasta’s a crazy white cone.
    I drive as fast as I dare.
    Car my shelter, my tiny house
    of spiders’ nests and trash. Even
    in an imaginary land,
    you need to refuel: 8.5
    gallons of unleaded and
    I-5’s traditional cuisine:
    crinkly bags of Chex Mix and
    Sour Worms at Manfredi’s
    Food & Gas Depot in Dunsmuir.
    On the passenger seat, a
    thumb-sized jar of my father’s
    ashes. I’d be lying if
    I said it didn’t give me
    a weird little thrill to have
    him sit where I sat as a
    child, those deeply dull hours
    in our Dodge Dart, him driving
    too fast and lecturing me
    about dog breeds and the French
    Revolution. Just after
    the sign that says “College Weed”
    with arrows in front of each
    word pointing in opposite
    directions, I take the curve
    a little fast, reach over,
    right the jar of my father’s
    ashes, saying, sorry, did
    I scare you? We hurtle past
    the “Oregon Welcomes You”
    sign with its eight black trees spot-
    lighted in the evening
    dusk. I’m flying, faster and
    faster down the mountain to-
    wards Ashland but we’re still in
    Jefferson, my father and
    I, land of the elegantly
    rusting Penelope the
    Dragon, of signs proclaiming
    “No Monument” and “Bigfoot
    Crossing,” of few people and
    a few million cows. I chew
    the last of the Sour Worms.
    High-fructose powder dusts my
    fingers. How you doing, dad?
    He doesn’t answer. Perhaps
    at last, he’s fallen asleep.

We spoke with Goss about the sorts of places she’d never write about, how she came to write the poem, and the real State of Jefferson.

The post Erica Goss Wins Zócalo’s Eighth Annual Poetry Prize appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.