Since 2012, we have awarded the Zócalo Poetry Prize to the U.S. writer whose original poem best evokes a connection to place. This year, writers submitted more than 1,000 poems to Zócalo staff and judges for consideration. We are also pleased to recognize four honorable mention poems, by Tommy Vinh Bui, Fatma Omar, Abu Bakr Sadiq, and Yvanna Vien Tica, which we will publish on Fridays in May.

Almeder is the John P. Fishwick Professor of Literature at Roanoke College and a community arts organizer. Her first book of poems, On Dream Street, won the Tupelo Press Editors’ Prize, and her poetry has been published in a range of journals, including the Seneca Review, Poetry, and the American Literary Review. Zócalo is delighted to share Almeder’s winning poem and an interview with her about the origins of “Coyote Hour,” and how and where she connects with nature.

The Zócalo Poetry Prize is awarded in conjunction with the Zócalo Book Prize for the best nonfiction book on community and social cohesion. Almeder will receive a $1,000 prize and will be honored at our annual Book Prize event on June 13, 2024. The 2024 literary prizes are generously sponsored by Tim Disney.

Coyote Hour

Late June the fattened raccoon,
precise as a garbage man, tips the
garbage cans and out spill
the remnants of last week’s renters’

lobster feasts: the carcasses,
cooked to a cerulean red are
scattered hieroglyphics. No matter
the weather, at four a.m.

the millionaire’s sprinklers hiss on, mist the
skinny birch. His yard is as lush as a new
carpet. In two weeks flat last summer his new
house cropped up, kit-quick.

The summer visitors arrive gleefully,
armed with Deet and rosé.  They sit
in clutches on the beach
while the piping plovers peet-

peet-peet back to fenced enclosures.
By July, seaweed clots rot
corporeally, draw flies, the horizon
buzzes with motors.

I can’t tell from here which boats
might be stalled among the buoys or
which might be
fishing for hours. A former President summers

near. His security men patrol the bay in a
speed boat named “Fidelity.”  The marsh
does its crabbed best: willets nest,
and least terns careen themselves

over the high tide, certain for minnows.
September arrives as a sigh of quiet.  I walk the
wrack line. A seal periscopes up, stares back at
me like an old self. Cool lapses in.

One dusk, a skinny coyote steps from the marsh into the light
cast by the fire pit I contrived of discarded bricks. She does not
startle, raises her gaze to me, then trots off towards the field
that borders a field that borders a highway.

The post Melanie Almeder Wins the 2024 Zócalo Poetry Prize appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

We are on the lookout for that rare combination of creativity and clarity, excellence and evocation. The prize interprets “place” in many ways: A location may possess historical, cultural, political, or personal importance, and may be literal, imaginary, or metaphorical.

Our 13th annual winner will be selected by the Zócalo staff, working in conjunction with a Poetry Prize selection committee. The winner will receive $1,000 and will have the opportunity to read their poem at the Zócalo Book Prize event in the spring. Zócalo will also publish the poem on our site alongside an interview with the poet. In addition, we plan to recognize our honorable mention submissions.

Screenwriter and philanthropist Tim Disney returns to sponsor Zócalo’s literary prize program, which also includes the Zócalo Public Square Book Prize.

Our past winners have found inspiration abroad and at home, in nature and on city streets, and from places and spaces they traveled to only in their minds:

• Paige Buffington, “From 20 Miles Outside of Gallup, Holbrook, Winslow, Farmington, or Albuquerque” (2023)
• Chelsea Rathburn, “8 a.m., Ocean Drive” (2022)
• Angelica Esquivel, “La Mujer” (2021)
• Jai Hamid Bashir, “Little Bones” (2020)
• Erica Goss, “The State of Jefferson” (2019)
• Charles Jensen, “Tucson” (2018)
• Matt Sumpter, “No World” (2017)
• Matt Phillips, “Crossing Coronado Bridge” (2016)
• Gillian Wegener, “The Old Mill Café” (2015)
• Amy Glynn, “Shoreline” (2014)
• Jia-Rui Chong Cook, “Fault” (2013)
• Jody Zorgdrager, “Coming Back, It Comes Back” (2012)

Submission Guidelines

For consideration, please send up to three poems to poetry@zocalopublicsquare.org.

Please attach your poem(s) as a single Word document to your email. Include your name, address, phone number, and email address on each poem. Personal identification will be removed prior to review by the judges. We will accept online submissions only, and receipt will be acknowledged at the time of submission.

Eligibility

Poems must be original and previously unpublished work. We accept up to three poems from each writer as well as simultaneous submissions; let us know immediately if your work is accepted elsewhere.

Judging

Entries will be judged based on originality of ideas, theme, and style. Judging is at the sole discretion of Zócalo Public Square and our Poetry Prize committee. The winner will be announced in spring 2024, and the winning poet will receive $1,000, a published interview, and an opportunity for a public reading hosted by Zócalo. The winning poem will be published on zocalopublicsquare.org. We will also be publishing a selection of honorable mention poems; those writers will receive $100.

Conditions

The winning poem and honorable mentions become the property of Zócalo Public Square, but writers may republish their poems at a later date after crediting and receiving permission from Zócalo. By entering the contest, the entrants grant Zócalo the right to publish and distribute their poems for media and publicity purposes, along with the poets’ name and photograph. Poets will be contacted by Zócalo before we publish any submission.

The post The 2024 Zócalo Poetry Prize Recognizes Poems About Place appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

Since 2012, we have awarded the Zócalo Poetry Prize to the U.S. writer whose original poem best evokes a connection to place. This year, more than 700 writers submitted work to Zócalo staff and judges for consideration. We are also pleased to recognize four honorable mention poems, by Brent Ameneyro, Eleanor Stanford, Andrew Calis, and Despy Boutris, which we will publish over the next four Fridays to celebrate U.S. National Poetry Month. The Zócalo Poetry Prize is awarded in conjunction with the Zócalo Book Prize for the best nonfiction book on community and social cohesion. The 2023 literary prizes are generously sponsored by Tim Disney.

Buffington is Navajo, of the Bear Enemies Clan born for White People. She received an MFA from the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Her work has appeared in publications including Narrative, Terrain.org, Honey Literary, and the Yellow Medicine Review.

Zócalo is delighted to share Buffington’s winning poem and an interview about her home, her family, and how teaching kindergarten connects to her writing practice. She will receive a $1,000 prize and will be honored alongside author Michelle Wilde Anderson at the Zócalo Book Prize event on June 15, 2023.

From 20 Miles Outside of Gallup, Holbrook, Winslow, Farmington, or Albuquerque

The post Paige Buffington Wins the 2023 Zócalo Poetry Prize appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

It took until the cusp of middle age—the ripe age of 39—for me to write what would become my first book.

The spark for this new stage of my life was grief. My wife and I were lucky to have a healthy 8-year-old boy, but the pregnancy had been difficult. Little did we know that the experience would portend years of trying to have another child—and eventually, seven miscarriages.

I was content to stop after the first miscarriage, but my wife deeply desired another baby, so who was I to argue? But by the fifth miscarriage, as I tried to help my wife and young son through their grief, I was struggling with my own. In search of comfort and healing, I started to write.

The subject matter that I chose to explore was my paternal grandparents’ migration from Mexico to Los Angeles in the 1920s. I wanted to construct, from both family history and my own imagination, their lives in this city. I wanted to imagine and write about the struggles and triumphs of people who left their homeland to begin anew—perhaps as a guide, of sorts, to help me navigate my grief, or even as a simple reassurance that we all suffer through difficult times but we can work through them and not only survive but thrive.

Something deep inside me whispered that this creative exercise might offer catharsis, a release from the grief I was enduring. And it did. The Courtship of María Rivera Peña, my first novella, gave me new space to explore the joy and pains that life presents. I am not trained in psychology, but I suspect there is a term for what I experienced. There were moments during the writing process when tears ran down my face in a way that was almost cleansing. Seeing the fictionalized lives of my grandparents take form on the page of my novella seemed to clarify the well of hurt I felt, making it more bearable.

The Courtship of María Rivera Peña has been on my mind because I’ve been looking into getting it back in print for its 25th anniversary. Returning to the text now—it’s been at least a decade since I’ve read it last—I’ve been struck by how present Los Angeles is in the tale, the location giving the story meaning, contours, and vibrancy. Set amid the dramatic growth and development of the late 1920s to the early 1950s L.A., the city offers Humberto Isla Velasco (known by his nickname of “Beto”), María, and their community places to worship, ways to earn a living, and spaces to commune over meals and be entertained. All of this fed their souls, bodies, and minds in ways that enriched their daily existence even amid struggles that immigrants in this country so often face, from bigotry to economic inequality.

That Los Angeles has deeply informed my fiction from the start makes sense because L.A. is so deeply embedded in my DNA, if a metropolis can imprint itself on our essence. My people have been here for a century, and the major milestones of my life are spread throughout Los Angeles, like so many marbles on a schoolyard.

I was born at the now-shuttered Temple Community Hospital on North Hoover Avenue, a year after the Dodgers left Brooklyn and played their first game in Los Angeles. I spent the first few years of my life three miles from that hospital in a little blue house on Dewey Avenue that was torn down to make way for a parking lot that serves Loyola High School where I would eventually enroll years later. And a few months before JFK’s assassination, we moved a half mile west to a gray wood-framed house on Ardmore Avenue that I called home until I married and moved to the San Fernando Valley to start a family. When our son eventually graduated from UCLA and moved out, one of his first apartments was in Koreatown not far from the blue-green, terra-cotta-tiled Wiltern Theatre on Wilshire Boulevard, where I enjoyed double features as a child. And as empty nesters, my wife and I migrated out of the Valley toward downtown Los Angeles, eventually settling in Pasadena.

All of these pieces of Los Angeles have made their way into my work, the landmarks and history natural allies in my attempts to depict my hometown’s profound Mexican roots and to center a people and culture that so often have been erased—or worse yet, stereotyped—in works that critics have dubbed “essential” Los Angeles literature but have largely ignored my community. My writing is a natural reflection of the L.A. I know, a place that’s deeply segregated, with an ugly history of police brutality, exclusion, and systematic alienation, but also one where many have thrived and built remarkable lives against seemingly insurmountable obstacles.

My relationship with Los Angeles continues to grow stronger and more complex as the years go by. A few months ago, I visited my mother at the small house in Ventura she and my late father purchased in the mid-1980s. We chatted about her parents’ courtship as well as her courtship with my father. Many of the family stories that she shared I had known for years—but she also told me something that reminded me how tied I really am, physically and spiritually, to this place.

At one point, we talked about the moments when my grandfather and father realized they were ready to marry. For my grandfather, the light bulb went off in 1925 at the Alexandria Hotel on 501 South Spring Street, where he was reunited with my grandmother (who had been his girlfriend in Mexico) at a party. In what I imagine was a magical evening, my grandfather swore off the single life and proposed marriage. For my parents, something similar happened in 1952, just down the street, at the Title Insurance and Trust Building at 433 South Spring Street. My mother worked as a secretary there and used to take lunchtime calls from my father at the public payphone outside. It was during one of those phone calls that he proposed. (Apparently, he had wanted to propose a few days earlier while on a date with my mother, but he felt thwarted by the presence of my aunt who was appointed chaperone by my grandfather.) That same street in downtown plays a starring role in my own life, too, because just steps away from the proposal, I’ve practiced law for the last 31 years in the Reagan State Building at 300 South Spring Street.

Three generations of my family, then, have lived, worked, and loved—for almost 100 years—on this relatively small patch of Spring Street. In a metropolis this size, what are the odds? I pointed out the connection to my mother, and she looked at me for a moment in silence. Then, a smile slowly formed on her beautiful face, and she laughed.

“I can’t believe it,” she said. “But you’re right. Without that street, there wouldn’t be any of us!”

It made me realize that Los Angeles will always be a constant character in my fiction. Because it has, quite literally, made me.

The post Los Angeles Will Always Be a Character in My Story appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

We are on the lookout for that rare combination of creativity and clarity, excellence and evocation. The prize interprets “place” in many ways: A location may possess historical, cultural, political, or personal importance, and may be literal, imaginary, or metaphorical.

Our 12th annual winner will be selected by the Zócalo staff, working in conjunction with a poetry prize selection committee. The winner will receive $1,000 and will have the opportunity to deliver their poem at the Zócalo Book Prize event in the spring. Zócalo will also publish the poem on our site alongside an interview with the poet. In addition, we plan to recognize our honorable mention submissions.

Screenwriter and philanthropist Tim Disney returns to sponsor Zócalo’s literary prize program, which also includes the Zócalo Public Square Book Prize.

Please read and enjoy the poems from our 11 past winners, which travel to San Diego, Ohio, and Mexico, to a kitchen, a beach, and a gas station parking lot, and to the landscapes of these writers’ imaginations, memories, and dreams.

• Chelsea Rathburn, “8 a.m., Ocean Drive” (2022)
• Angelica Esquivel, “La Mujer” (2021)
• Jai Hamid Bashir, “Little Bones” (2020)
• Erica Goss, “The State of Jefferson” (2019)
• Charles Jensen, “Tucson” (2018)
• Matt Sumpter, “No World” (2017)
• Matt Phillips, “Crossing Coronado Bridge” (2016)
• Gillian Wegener, “The Old Mill Café” (2015)
• Amy Glynn, “Shoreline” (2014)
• Jia-Rui Chong Cook, “Fault” (2013)
• Jody Zorgdrager, “Coming Back, It Comes Back” (2012)

Submission Guidelines

For consideration, please send up to three poems to poetry@zocalopublicsquare.org.

Please attach your poem(s) as a single Word document to your email. Include your name, address, phone number, and email address on each poem. Personal identification will be removed prior to review by the judges. We will accept online submissions only, and receipt will be acknowledged at the time of submission.

Eligibility

Poems must be original and previously unpublished work. We accept up to three poems from each writer as well as simultaneous submissions; let us know immediately if your work is accepted elsewhere.

Judging

Entries will be judged based on originality of ideas, theme, and style. Judging is at the sole discretion of Zócalo Public Square and our poetry prize committee. The winner will be announced in spring 2023, and the winning poet will receive $1,000, a published interview, and an opportunity for a public reading hosted by Zócalo. The winning poem will be published on zocalopublicsquare.org. We will also be celebrating our honorable mention submissions.

Conditions

The winning poem and honorable mentions become the property of Zócalo Public Square, but the writers may republish their poems at a later date with Zócalo’s permission. By entering the contest, the entrants grant Zócalo the right to publish and distribute their poems for media and publicity purposes, along with the poets’ name and photograph. Poets will be contacted by Zócalo before we publish any submission.

The post The 2023 Zócalo Poetry Prize Celebrates Poems of Place appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

The Zócalo Poetry Prize has been awarded since 2011 to the U.S. writer whose original poem best evokes a connection to place. After nearly two years of on-and-off sheltering in place, the prize’s subject is front and center for many of us; this year, writers from all walks of life submitted more than 1,000 poems for consideration. Place and poetry have long been important elements of how Zócalo fulfills its mission to connect people to ideas and each other, exploring the ground on which we all stand and the human condition we share. The Zócalo Poetry Prize is awarded in conjunction with the Zócalo Book Prize, for the best nonfiction book on community and social cohesion. The 2022 literary prizes are again generously sponsored by Tim Disney.

Rathburn is the author of three collections of poetry, most recently Still Life with Mother and Knife, winner of the 2020 Eric Hoffer Book Award in Poetry. Her poems have appeared in Poetry, the Southern Review, the Atlantic, and other journals. In 2019, she was appointed the poet laureate of Georgia. She teaches at Mercer University and lives in Macon with her family.

Zócalo is delighted to share Rathburn’s winning poem and an interview about her connections to Miami, the Southern poets she admires, and the role of place in her work. She will be honored alongside author Heather McGhee at the Zócalo Book Prize event on June 1, 2022, and will also receive a $1,000 prize.

8 a.m., Ocean Drive

The morning opens like a shell
under steam, but that’s too warm
a metaphor for early March
on Miami Beach, where despite the breeze
and gentle sun the streets are empty
except for delivery trucks
and trash collectors and people waiting
for the bus. What I mean to say
is there’s a gradual unfolding,
everything golden and green: sunlight
on the palm trees and hibiscus,
parking spots glittering like gifts.
The drunks who stood outside my window
at 4 a.m. shouting across
the imagined chasm of the alley
are still asleep. The tourists are
just now rising. And I, neither
tourist nor citizen, walk the streets
I used to know looking for landmarks,
matching buildings to memories,
or trying to: the galleries
and boutiques years gone, guessable
only by the curve of a wall here,
a design laid into a terrazzo floor.
Around me the work that makes the dream
possible: trucks unload into kitchens
and bodegas, waiters scour tables,
men mop floors. Even the sidewalks
are freshly hosed. By afternoon,
these streets will be impassable,
the sidewalks too, with so much splendor,
such conspicuous leisure, but now
there’s room to notice the valets idling
and how, in the alley between hotels,
past dumpsters and service doors, a man
carries an armful of fallen palm fronds
carefully off like a bouquet.

The post Chelsea Rathburn Wins the 2022 Zócalo Poetry Prize appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

As with everything else Zócalo features, we are on the lookout for that rare combination of brilliance and clarity, excellence and accessibility. The prize interprets “place” in many ways: A place may possess historical, cultural, political, or personal importance, and may be literal, imaginary, or metaphorical.

Our 11th annual winner will be selected by the Zócalo staff, working in conjunction with a poetry prize selection committee. The winner will receive $1,000 and will have the opportunity to deliver their poem at our spring book prize event. Zócalo will also publish the poem on our site alongside an interview with the poet. In addition, we plan to recognize our honorable mention submissions.

Screenwriter and philanthropist Tim Disney returns to sponsor Zócalo’s literary prize program, which also includes the Zócalo Public Square Book Prize.

Please read and enjoy the poems from our 10 past winners, which travel to San Diego, Ohio, and Mexico, to a kitchen, a beach, and a gas station parking lot, and to the landscapes of these writers’ imaginations, memories, and dreams.

• Angelica Esquivel, “La Mujer” (2021)
• Jai Hamid Bashir, “Little Bones” (2020)
• Erica Goss, “The State of Jefferson” (2019)
• Charles Jensen, “Tucson” (2018)
• Matt Sumpter, “No World” (2017)
• Matt Phillips, “Crossing Coronado Bridge” (2016)
• Gillian Wegener, “The Old Mill Café” (2015)
• Amy Glynn, “Shoreline” (2014)
• Jia-Rui Chong Cook, “Fault” (2013)
• Jody Zorgdrager, “Coming Back, It Comes Back” (2012)

Submission Guidelines

Submissions for the 2022 prize are now closed. Please check back in fall 2022 for more information about the 2023 Zócalo Poetry Prize.

Eligibility

Poems must be original and previously unpublished work. We accept simultaneous submissions; let us know immediately if your work is accepted elsewhere.

Judging

Entries will be judged based on originality of ideas, theme, and style. Judging is at the sole discretion of Zócalo Public Square and our poetry prize committee. The winner will be announced in spring 2022, and the winning poet will receive $1,000, a published interview, and an opportunity for a public reading hosted by Zócalo. The winning poem will be published on zocalopublicsquare.org. We will also be celebrating our honorable mention submissions.

Conditions

The winning poem becomes the property of Zócalo Public Square, but the writer may republish the poem at a later date with Zócalo’s permission. By entering the contest, the entrant grants Zócalo the right to publish and distribute their poem for media and publicity purposes, along with the poet’s name and photograph. Poets will be contacted by Zócalo before we publish any submission, either for the contest or on our site.

The post The 2022 Zócalo Public Square Poetry Prize Explores Place appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

Musicals are an everywhere phenomenon. They touch an enormously broad swath of American lives, unapologetically building worlds that don’t yet exist. I see this commitment to the not-yet as an aspiration for the rest of us stuck living in the here-and-now.

I recently wrote a book about musicals, and visited communities in the heartland that were using musical theater to help understand their place in this country. I watched an original musical about Samson and Delilah in Branson, Missouri; took note of the prestigious musical theater training centers in Cincinnati, Ohio and Oklahoma City, Oklahoma; and discovered traces of musical theater cultures in remote corners of Oklahoma, Arizona, and beyond. I chose to focus on the middle of the country because that’s where so many of America’s favorite stories about itself take place, the characters here extreme in either their moral winnings or their moral failures. It’s no surprise that this is where so many of America’s iconic musicals like Oklahoma!, The Wizard of Oz, or The Music Man spin their clever fantasies, the Professor Harold Hills hopping off trains and stealing their way into our hearts again and again. But ya gotta know the territory.

In musicals as in real life, the middle is a powerful idea in this country. Caught between reality and fiction, truth and fantasy, and the amateur and professional, musical theater in the middle of America captures the heart of what this place can be on its best-dressed days. Musicals break through class and political strata in America better than any other style of entertainment; and because these productions often involve whole communities, audiences and performers in the heartland reflect a more dynamic mix of race, class, gender, and religion than any Times Square theater has been able to manage. It may be that musical theater in the middle of America, with school performances of The Little Mermaid and church sermons expounding the traditional family values of Fiddler on the Roof, captures wide-eyed American possibility better than Broadway ever could.

I grew up in rural Oklahoma, and always knew first-hand that musical theater mattered here. Middle school and high school productions were frequent even in my small town, and the several churches in the area put on musicals regularly, to say nothing of the ease with which Broadway tunes like Carousel’s “You’ll Never Walk Alone” and Godspell’s “Day by Day” made their way into weddings, funerals, parades, and revival meetings. It wasn’t until I scanned wider that I discovered how it mattered in these overlooked, under-examined spaces. Musicals spread across the geography of this place in ways that illuminate how we believe and imagine. In place after place, musicals matter because they help us practice belonging to America and continue believing in it.

Take the fundamentalist Mormon community in rural Arizona who adapted The Sound of Music into a polygamous propaganda piece where songs and dances swapped from other musicals made sure the governess Maria fell not for a grieving captain with seven children but rather for a multi-wived captain happily seeking yet another. The production was shocking and also touching. Its creators crafted an idea of America in their own image by crafting a musical where they belonged. Their example shows how musicals help communities of all kinds rehearse living in better versions of America. How can you belong in America, they ask, if you don’t first find yourself in an American musical?

It’s no surprise, really, that you find musical theater mattering in profound ways within religious settings, in those American communities where faith matters most. A performance of the musical Samson in Branson, Missouri, used the magic of the stage to make Samson and Delilah’s distant (if not mythical) past align with values of today’s evangelical Christianity—the musical providing the enchanted spackling to cover gaps and cracks in a modern religious façade troubled by secular reasoning. Through strange rituals and performative customs, musicals, like many religions, look beyond this world with bleary-eyed anticipation. All things will work out in the end, they celebrate. And in the end, we can live in a world that has been fully remade, with villains banished and problems resolved.

In her 1966 book, Purity and Danger, the anthropologist Mary Douglas noted that communities decide what makes dirt dirty, that describing something as “dirty” has little to do with impurity; rather, dirt is, as she put it, “matter out of place.” I’ve come to think of musicals in similar ways. Musicals lie about the world—they smooth over our reality with their alternate one, where people burst into song and dance and strangers know one another’s choreography. They rush to simplified and tidy endings, and unlikely reconciliations. I saw this in a homemade production by the Oklahoma Senior Follies in which senior citizens portrayed youthful scenes of lust, danced suggestively, and good-humoredly essentialized the older years as the best time of their lives. Americans often conflate increased aging with decreased value. But through the musical stage, aging performers created a not-yet world where this was not the case. Our here-and-now world doesn’t work that way.

Musicals are clever lies—and we need more of their deceptions. Lies have a bad reputation. With truth a fluid concept these days, it sometimes feels as if we are stuck pitting one set of truths against another and battling it out indefinitely. Lies offer a way out. They open space for stories about worlds that don’t yet exist. They give us a chance to invent the kind of idylls we want to live in, places more committed to justice, community, and healing. Don’t get me wrong, truth does matter. But there are times when telling a lie is more righteous than being honest: when doctors recommend a harmless placebo for an anxious patient, for instance, or when one flatters a friend with exaggerated feedback they want to hear. Lies are exercises in imagination, hotbeds of creativity, projections of promise. Lies, like musicals, to borrow Douglas’s phrase, are stories out of place.

This lesson gets lost if we crease musical theater’s map to only one city—New York—and chart performances only as some escapade of selling silliness. The pandemic has given America an opportunity to rethink where, how, and why musicals happen. Broadway may be returning with ticker tape but my experiences in the middle of America suggest that musical theater ought to be re-placed—reimagined as powerful, multi-sited performances of an America that might be.

I am happy for the return to normalcy Broadway’s reopening signals. I am glad for my friends and former students whose livelihoods depend on the theater industry. And I’m glad for the laughs, tears, and thrills audiences can once again come to expect night after night. But I also keep it in perspective. Musical theater is bigger than Times Square. Its hopes and dreams and fantasies and deceptions spill the banks of New York, flowing through the hills and cities of America’s middle lands and into the hearts and minds of people most would never think to associate with musical theater. Musicals are as big and wide as America, and America can only be as big and wide as our musicals help us to imagine.

The post Is Anything More American Than <i>Oklahoma!</i> in Oklahoma? appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

The power of this concept to unite our distinct realities around universal themes feels especially important in this year of separation. Place can illuminate the commonalities that flow between a 9-year-old poet muddling through distance learning and a retiree turning to the form for the first time in the pandemic. The 2021 prize submissions—more than 900 poems from more than 450 poets—also included poems that were written by incarcerated people, and submitted by their family members.

Zócalo poetry editor, Connie Voisine, and our panel of judges—Arizona poet laureate Alberto Ríos, Los Angeles Deputy Mayor for International Affairs Nina L. Hachigian, and Zócalo trustee Reza Zaidi—had no easy task in choosing this year’s winner. But the submission that won them over stood out for the way the poem weaves together strands that resonate deeply in the public consciousness—familial bonds, oppression and resilience, and exploration of cultural identity—and anchors them within a loving and meticulous study of its title subject.

We are thrilled to announce that the 10th Annual Zócalo Poetry Prize, complete with $1,000, goes to Angelica Esquivel for her poem “La Mujer.”

“A smart poem that ranges from jelly slip-on sandals to Utilitarianism and Chuck Close, ‘La Mujer’ is a vivid statement of how a woman creates a niche for herself from what’s at hand and exceeds it, as heroes do,” says Zócalo poetry editor, Connie Voisine.

Angelica Esquivel is a Xicana writer and embroidery artist from Fostorio, Ohio. She studied English and Creative Writing at the University of Michigan, where she won three Hopwood Awards and the Quinn Prize for Best Creative Thesis. Her work has appeared in or is forthcoming from Crab Orchard Review, America, Rabbit, Chestnut Review, and Lunch Ticket, and she will begin her graduate studies at Bowling Green State University as an MFA candidate in fiction this fall. She currently lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan, with her husband and dogs.

Esquivel will deliver a public reading of her poem during the 11th Annual Zócalo Book Prize Lecture, which will stream live on May 20 at 5 p.m. PDT. Thanks to Tim Disney’s new sponsorship of Zócalo’s Book and Poetry Prizes, this year for the first time we will also recognize five poetry honorable mention award winners: Sophie Klahr, LeConté Dill, Ross White, Sophia Chong, and Ernesto L. Abeytia. Their poems will be published in May in the lead up to the lecture, and will be accompanied by original illustrations by artworxLA student artists.

“La Mujer” is below, along with an interview with poet Angelica Esquivel by Zócalo assistant editor, Kelsey Schoenberg, and an illustration of “La Mujer” by Dante Albano, artworxLA student artist.

    La Mujer

    Candyland’s queen is a believer borne of
    jelly slip-on sandals and ruthless pretension,
    sour offerings of limon y sal. Her niche
    is here and aqui tu entiendes yin y yang—
    pop can tabs in a jar above the stove, aguacate
    ripening on the windowsill. Utilitarianism
    embraced and stitched to something
    lovely. On the wall, a painting of an elder in
    the style of Chuck Close, rippling pixels of
    gray mustache, sun weathered skin. She, his
    queen, refuses to be reduced to a crankshaft
    or piece of produce. She is the sole change
    in a roomful of constants, syrup over
    plywood paneling, corn husks soaking in the
    sink. A silver braid snakes down her back as
    she hums along to the accordion song, boiling
    tap water and stealing secrets for lunch.

Illustration by Dante Albano, artworxLA student artist.

The post Angelica Esquivel Wins Zócalo’s 10th Annual Poetry Prize appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

Since 2012, Zócalo has awarded the prize annually to the U.S. poet whose poem best evokes a connection to place. “Place” may be interpreted in many ways, be it of historical, cultural, political, or personal importance; the landscape may also be literal, imaginary, or metaphorical.

As with everything else Zócalo features, we are on the lookout for that rare combination of brilliance and clarity, excellence, and accessibility.

Our 10th winner will be selected by the Zócalo staff, working in conjunction with a poetry prize selection committee. The winner will receive $1,000 and will have the opportunity to deliver their poem at our spring book prize event. Zócalo will also publish the poem on our site alongside an interview with the poet.

Please take a look at our winning entries from 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2020.

The poetry prize competition is hosted in conjunction with our book prize, awarded to the nonfiction book that most enhances our understanding of community.

Submission Guidelines

Eligibility

Poems must be original and previously unpublished work.

Submission

For consideration, please send up to three poems to poetry@zocalopublicsquare.org.

Please attach your poem(s) as a single Word document to your email. Include your name, address, phone number, and email address on each poem. Personal identification will be removed prior to review by the judges. We will accept online submissions only, and receipt will be acknowledged at the time of submission.

Judging

Entries will be judged based on originality of ideas, theme, and style. Judging is at the sole discretion of Zócalo Public Square and our poetry prize committee. The winner will be announced in spring 2020, and the winning poet will receive $1,000, a published interview, and an opportunity for a public reading hosted by Zócalo. The winning poem will be published on zocalopublicsquare.org.

Conditions

The winning poem becomes the property of Zócalo Public Square, but the writer may republish the poem at a later date with Zócalo’s permission. By entering the contest, the entrant grants Zócalo the right to publish and distribute their poem for media and publicity purposes, along with the poet’s name and photograph. Poets will be contacted by Zócalo before we publish any submission, either for the contest or on our site.

The post Announcing the 10th Annual Zócalo Public Square Poetry Prize appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.