 Many thanks to each and every one of you who participated in the Lucky 7 Ekphrastic Marathon in July! The marathon was an idea we borrowed from Meg Pokrass, and it was an experiment, and an experience. What a wild and intense outpouring of creativity it was! The ebook anthology of selected and winning entries is available for free download below. Please, please, please share this on your social media and send a copy to everyone you know. Tell the world about this journal and about our amazing writers. It is now the moment of truth. Our judges, Meg Pokrass for flash fiction, and Brent Terry, for poetry, have chosen the winners. The judges read the submissions from documents with no names. Please join me in congratulating the winners! Flash Fiction A Life of Drowning (first place): Nan Wigington The Fist They Make: Karen Walker Underground: Bayveen O’Connell I enjoyed reading the entries after having experienced the creative benefits of writing marathons myself. The stories I read were energetic and original, and I found it hard to select only one winner, but ultimately, “A Life of Drowning” won me over with its magical qualities. The late Russell Edson stated that prose poetry can create “a beautiful new animal.” “A Life of Drowning,” taken from the painting The Fisherman’s Cottage, shows the reader three moments in which a woman’s fate hangs in the balance. There are three “drownings,” but I won’t ruin the story by saying too much… The result delights us with the wildness of life’s uncertainty. There is a familiar and uncomfortable feeling about this story that is much like life itself, filled with weird surprises. Tapping gently into the all-too- familiar spectrum of a woman’s roles as a mother, wife, and daughter, the story addresses the archetypal problem of being “assigned” roles in life that few of us are truly cut out for. The author refuses to provide answers because answers, like the weather itself, are simply not to be trusted. This is utterly fantastic, dreamy writing. The strange, fable-like experience builds to a sad and beautiful conclusion. Plunged into a fairytale universe, the lines between fantasy and reality disappear. Meg Pokrass Poetry My Other Hand is a Tuba (first place): D. Dina Friedman Ex-voto for Washerwomen: Laurel Benjamin The Nuns' Complaints: Laurel Benjamin What a delight it was to read (and re-read, aaaand re-read) these poems. And what a challenge to narrow them down to three finalists and eventually one winner. The poems showed quality throughout, a remarkable range of formal inventiveness, and a rich array of interpretations of just what ekphrasis means anyway. From spelunking the original artwork and reporting back about what lies beneath the surface, to using the original as a launching pad to explore new ideas or the writer's own psychic landscape, these poems stretched the limits of what ekphrastic poetry can mean and do, and they pointed toward new frontiers in the form. I am honoured and inspired to have experienced them. Brent Terry ** Additional congratulations to those whose work was selected for the ebook anthology. 7 Aphorisms, by Saad Ali The Passage, by Claire Bateman After the Lantern Parade, by Roy Beckemeyer Ex-voto for Washerwomen, by Laurel Benjamin The Nuns' Complaints, by Laurel Benjamin The Passage, by Betsy Holleman Burke Art Walk Haibun, by Caitlin M.S. Buxbaum The Lantern Parade, by Michael Caines Headlines, by Kate Copeland Ghosts of Sakura, by Karen FitzGerald My Other Hand is a Tuba, by D. Dina Friedman Magic or Prayer, by Kortney Garrison O, the Raised Hand, by Karen George A Prayer to Selene, by Gabby Gilliam Ready to Go, by Cathy Hollister Nun in an Egg, by Lynne Kemen Fjord Summer, by Norbert Kovacs Diamonds for Stars, by Jackie Langetieg Recounting Hands, by Amy Marques Mirror Lake, by Jena Martin How These Shades of Blue, by Linda McQuarrie-Bowerman Shall We Dance, by Linda McQuarrie-Bowerman Haiku, by Lisa Molina Beyond the Lantern Parade, by Kim Murdock The Fisherman’s Wife, by Bayveen O’Connell Underground, by Bayveen O’Connell Praise, by Amy Phimister The Art of War, by Aline Soules Selected for Elimination (X-ed out), by Renée Szostek Hands, by Alarie Tennille Family Legend, by Deborah Trowbridge Torso Fruit, by Fran Turner Wheel of the Future, by Lauren Voeltz The Fist They Make, by Karen Walker A Life of Drowning, by Nan Wigington Ghost Sequence, by Cullen Wisenhunt Effigy Hand by Hopewell Culture 100BC-400AD, by Catherine Young FREE ANTHOLOGY DOWNLOAD HERE
2 Comments
Deborah Trowbridge
9/2/2022 10:57:41 am
Friday, September 2, 2022
LINDA MCQUARRIE-BOWERMAN
9/2/2022 06:45:14 pm
Congratulations to all Winners! what fabulous pieces. And thank you so much for including two of my Poems in this wonderful e-anthology. I have just had a quick look through it and it is so beautifully put together. Your comment will be posted after it is approved.
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