Pelham Poetry Contest Winners

Congratulations to all of the winners of the Pelham Library Political Poetry Contest. The winners included Pelham's own Jake Soifer and Maria Morrissey. Here are the details from the Library:

The Town of Pelham Public Library is pleased to announce the winners of the sixth annual James J. Nicholson Political Poetry Contest. The winners include Donna Barkman of Ossining, whose poem “Victorious” took top prize in the adult category. In the student categories, Pelham’s Jake Soifer and Maria Morrissey, both freshmen at Pelham Memorial High School, tied for the top prize in the high school category for their poems The Mask of Sincerity and E Pluribus Unum, respectively. In addition, freshman Olivia Childs will receive an honorable mention for her poem War in a Small Village. There will be no top prize in the middle school category this year.

A poetry reading and reception will be held at 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, April 11, at the Town of Pelham Public Library. It will feature readings by Joshua Mehigan, who served as judge of the adult category this year, along with award recipients Donna Barkman, Maria Morrissey and Jake Soifer and, student honorable mention, Olivia Childs. The event is open to the public, with doors opening at 7:30 p.m.

About his selection of Ms. Barkman’s winning entry, Mehigan said:

“Donna Barkman’s “Victorious” stands against the simple-minded, widespread feeling that there can ever be such a thing as straightforward triumph in warfare. The poem is a close examination of the painting “Parade,” by contemporary Croatian artist Marin Majić. Barkman uses vivid but measured description to make sense of the painting’s weird allegory of Croat life after the Croatian War of Independence, capturing the unavoidable indeterminacy, remorse, and doubt that follow war, even for the victor. The poem is all the more effective for its understatement, which suggests the traumatized voice of a survivor cataloging extraordinary problems that have become commonplace. Barkman’s subject may be Croatia in the two decades since the war, but, like all good poets, she steps back a little to ensure that her insights could apply with equal force to the aftermath of any war. These insights may be painful, but Barkman’s poem is also implicitly about the redemptive power of art, which it argues in its attention to Majic’s painting, and which it also demonstrates.”

Joshua Mehigan’s poems have been featured in numerous publications, including Poetry, The New York Times, and The New Republic. His first book, The Optimist (Ohio Univ. Press, 2004), was winner of the Hollis Summers Poetry Prize and one of five finalists for a 2005 Los Angeles Times Book Prize. His second book, Accepting the Disaster, is forthcoming from Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Mr. Mehigan also is the recipient of a 2011 National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship and was awarded Poetry magazine’s 2011 Editors Prize for best feature article of the year. He lives with his wife in Brooklyn, New York, where he works as a teaching fellow at Brooklyn College.

The annual James J. Nicholson Political Poetry Prize competition was established by Pelham resident Peggy Nicholson and her children in memory of their beloved husband and father. For the sixth consecutive year, the competition has awarded top political poetry submitted in the adult category, open to any resident of Westchester County age 18 or older, and in the student categories, open to students at Pelham Memorial High School and Pelham Middle School.