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Winners: A Retrospective of the Washington Prize

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Winners: A Retrospective Of The Washington Prize is a collection of poems, essays, and anecdotes drawn from The Word Works sponsored "Washington Prize" and features the nineteen winners spanning 1981 to 1999. Enhanced with photos, this anthology presents those contest entries that give a complete picture of the selection process. Winners is both an excellent reference tool for poets eager to win a small press prize that results in publication, as well as wonderfully rewarding reading for anyone with an interest in the best contemporary poetry as judged by the standards applied for awarding the "Washington Prize". And Daddy Rides: Taxi driver, midday sun/Daughter photo on the dashboard lies/Long drive, pair of sympathetic eyes/He tells her story and rides//The bullet wasn't meant for her/The boyfriend jumped up out the way/But she stayed, and now she'll always stay/As he rides//She'll stay a girl of seventeen/And locked up in a darkened room/Her mother keeps her company/Wrapped in a chrysalis of grief/As he rides//One clings to death, one rides the roads/And though he loves his wife, he knows/That with the little girl she goes//"She took it hard." Is all he'll say/And watch them softly drift away/As he rides -- Maureen Murphy

Winners is a collection of poems from past recipients of the Washington Prize, and the people who labored behind-the-scenes as first-readers and judges. The Washington Prize was founded in 1981 by The Word Works -- a Washington D.C. area non-profit literary organization that publishes contemporary poetry -- awarding $1,000 for a single poem. Currently, the award has been boosted to $1,500 and publication for a book-length poetry manuscript.

The "Winners" collection devotes its first half to the winners themselves, and the poetry featured here is primarily free-style narrative, with some classic forms. Here's a sample from "A Diamond is Hard But Not Tough", by 1997's winner, Ann Rae Jonas:

Tough material bends / to absorb a force. / By the time one breaks, / the pieces forget / their original shape. / The bent nail, the key / jammed in the lock.

Poets out there should note that this book contains a preface by Hilary Tham, one of the editors, with advice on how to put together a "winning manuscript" -- advice that rings true whether you're entering a manuscript in a contest, or submitting it to an editor at a publishing house.

The second half of the book reads like a "who's who" of Washington D.C. area poets, and features works by: Karren LaLonde Alenier, author of four books and president of The Word Works; Patricia Gray, coordinator of the Library of Congress' Poetry at Noon series for the Office of Scholarly Programs; Brandon Johnson, founding member of Modern Urban Griots, a poetry and performance collective; Miles Moore, organizer and host of the IOTA Poetry Reading Series; and Martha Sanchez-Lowery, poetry editor of the literary annual Minimus.

The following is from Brandon Johnson's "Red House":

he's at the door, easin his key into the lock / but things change when you ain't lookin. / a woman's perfume, the color of her hair. / key don't turn, him thinkin Lisa's gone, / him, confused as uncut hair.

Readers will admire the breadth of talent in Winners, as well as the dedication of The Word Works for its effort to publish poetry that is essential, and for giving worthy poets a chance for national exposure.