2022 Split Rock Press Poetry Chapbook RESULTS

We’re thrilled to announce the results of the 2022 Split Rock Press Poetry Chapbook Series. Congratulations to the following poets and thanks to everyone who submitted manuscripts to the chapbook competition!

SELECTED MANUSCRIPTS AND AUTHORS (in alphabetical order)

Cautionary Tale by Willa Carroll

Willa Carroll is the author of Nerve Chorus (The Word Works). Her poems have appeared in AGNI, LARB Quarterly Journal, Poem-A-Day, The Slowdown, Tin House, and elsewhere. A finalist for The Georgia Poetry Prize, she won Narrative Magazine’s Third Annual Poetry Contest and Tupelo Quarterly’s TQ7 Poetry Prize. Her poetry videos and multimedia collaborations have been featured in Interim, Narrative, TriQuarterly, Writers Resist, and the Nature & Culture Film Festival in Denmark. She was awarded Best Poetry Film at the 2021 International Migration and Environmental Film Festival.

How to Keep Things Alive by Beth Gordon

Beth Gordon is a poet, mother and grandmother currently living in Asheville, NC. She is the author of Morning Walk with Dead Possum, Breakfast and Parallel Universe (Animal Heart Press); Particularly Dangerous Situation (Clare Songbirds Publishing) This Small Machine of Prayer (Kelsay Books); and The Water Cycle (Variant Literature). Beth is Managing Editor of Feral: A Journal of Poetry and Art, Assistant Editor of Animal Heart Press, and Grandma of Femme Salve Books. Find her on Twitter and Instagram @bethgordonpoet.

Vernal by Kateri Kosek

Kateri Kosek’s poetry and essays have appeared in such places as Orion, Terrain, Catamaran, and Creative Nonfiction, where, most recently, she was awarded for best essay. Her poetry has won Briar Cliff Review’s contest, and has been a finalist at Flyway, Writers at Work, Rosebud, and Arts & Letters. She teaches college English and mentors in the MFA program at Western CT State University, where she earned an MFA. She has been a resident at the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts and the Tallgrass Artist Residency in Kansas. She lives in western Massachusetts.

FINALISTS

The Afterforest by Brent Armendinger

Heavy Bloom by Angelina Brooks

Underground World by Scott Davidson

Conference of the Birds by Robert Gibb

SEMI-FINALISTS

Season of Seeds by Nick Conrad

Bless the Doors that Lock Both Ways by Megan Merchant

The Three Crooked Trees by Tim Moder

HONORABLE MENTION

Worm Dreams by Betsy Bolton

The Swan by Michael Hettich

North of December by Barbara Ponomareff

2021 Split Rock Press Chapbook Results

Many thanks to all those who submitted manuscripts to the Split Rock Press Poetry Chapbook Series. We were so fortunate to receive hundreds of submissions and selecting which to move forward was an incredibly difficult task. We’re thrilled to announce the winners and finalists of the 2021 Split Rock Press chapbook competition.

WINNERS

Leaving Earth by DJ Hills

Autobiography by Rebecca Macijeski

DJ Hills (@deejhills) is a writer and theatre artist from the Appalachian Mountains. Their writing appears most recently in SmokeLong Quarterly, wigleaf, and Oyster River Pages. Find them online at www.dj-hills.com.

Rebecca Macijeski is Creative Writing Program Coordinator and Assistant Professor at Northwestern State University in Natchitoches, Louisiana. She holds a PhD from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts, and a BA in English and Music from Simmons College (now Simmons University). She has attended artist residencies with The Ragdale Foundation, the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts, and Art Farm Nebraska. She's worked for Ted Kooser’s American Life in Poetry newspaper column, worked as an Assistant Editor in Poetry for Prairie Schooner and Hunger Mountain, and is the recipient of a 2012 Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Prize. A Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net Nominee, her poems have appeared in The Missouri Review, Conduit, Poet Lore, Barrow Street, Nimrod, The Journal, Sycamore Review, Fairy Tale Review, Puerto del Sol, and many others. Follow her on Twitter at @RMacijeski, or read more of her poems at www.rebeccamacijeski.com.

RUNNER-UP

Field Guides by Ray Ball

Finalists

(in alphabetical order)

My National Parks by Jacob Boyd

The Fisherman's Map by Mark Caskie

Written in Nature by Nancy Cook

alchemy of yeast and tears by Patricia Davis-Muffett

Okjökull by Elizabeth Jacobson

Hallucigenalia by Cindy King

How to Find a Black Hole in Your Kitchen by Dana Kroos

LUX by Molly Sturdevant

Blood Moon, Backyard Mountain by Rodd Whelpley

The Crossing Over by Jen Karetnick

The Crossing Over by Jen Karetnick

Winner of the 2018 Split Rock Review Poetry Chapbook Contest

We are so thrilled to announce the release of Jen Kartetnick’s The Crossing Over, winner of the 2018 Split Rock Review Poetry Chapbook Contest. This terrific chapbook is available at our e-store, Amazon, and independent booksellers.

ABOUT THE CROSSING OVER

These poems about the migrant experience in the Mediterranean, narrated from the boat's point of view, begin with the crafting of the vehicle – the birth of its voice – and end with its destruction. As much participant as it is victim, the boat is the lens through which the reader sees all that happens to the refugees: smuggling, hunger and thirst, rape, drowning, organ stealing, deportation, and repatriation – and, for some, survival in a new country Embodied by its burden of human experience, from birth in open international waters to an airplane exploding overhead from a bomb, the boat strives to interact with humans, good and evil, as well as the Mediterranean Sea itself, and all that it contains and maintains, both natural and made. As such, it takes on a variety of personas, becoming at turns unwitting witness to and un/willing partner of the refugees of various global crises, who have no choice but to make these desperate ocean journeys.

PRAISE FOR THE CROSSING OVER

“Boat as metaphor for what we carry. Boat as vessel (woman), boat as adventure (man and conquest). Boat as witness to abominations that befall immigrants and refugees. Boat lost at sea, ‘a brief dream the ocean / once had’ – as we all are sometimes lost. Boat as death, driven by Charon. Jen Karetnick’s The Crossing Over is a political, moral journey, a tour de force built by sonnets, lists, a ghazal, a concrete poem, a pantoum, and literary magic.” — Denise Duhamel, author of Scald

“This book is our most awaited guide for understanding what it means to be human among humans – or as the poet says, for ‘learning the rites for search and rescue.’ And, in order to command this search, Karetnick, like the most masterful of guides and poets, is willing to lead us and to look where most of us cannot. For this book, for this guide, this poet, we are right to be grateful.” — M.B. McLatchey, author of The Lame God

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Jen Karetnick is the author of four poetry collections, including The Treasures That Prevail and The Burning Where Breath Used to Be, four other poetry chapbooks, and author/co-author of four cookbooks, including Ice Cube Tray Recipes: 75 Easy and Creative Kitchen Hacks for Freezing, Cooking, and Baking with Ice Cube Trays. Her work has appeared in Crab Orchard Review, JAMA, Michigan Quarterly Review, The Missouri Review, Ovenbird, Salamander, and Tampa Review. She is co-founder/co-editor of the daily online literary journal, SWWIM Every Day. She works as the dining critic for MIAMI Magazine and as a freelance lifestyle journalist.  

2018 Chapbook Contest Winner!

Congratulations to the 2018 Split Rock Review poetry chapbook winner Jen Karetnick for her manuscript The Crossing Over, which explores migrant experiences in the Mediterranean that are told from the boat's point of view. The Crossing Over will be available in early 2019 via Amazon, independent booksellers, and Split Rock Review's online store. 

Jen Karetnick is the author of three full-length poetry collections, including The Treasures That Prevail (Whitepoint Press), finalist for the 2017 Poetry Society of Virginia Book Prize, and four poetry chapbooks. The winner of the 2017 Hart Crane Memorial Poetry Contest, the 2016 Romeo Lemay Poetry Prize, and the 2015 Anna Davidson Rosenberg Prize, her work has appeared in Crab Orchard Review, Cutthroat, Michigan Quarterly Review, The Missouri Review, Prairie Schooner, Verse Daily, among many other publications. Jen is the co-editor of  SWWIM Every Day, a daily online literary journal. She works as the Creative Writing Director for Miami Arts Charter School; the dining critic for MIAMI Magazine; a freelance lifestyle journalist; and a cookbook and guidebook author. Jen received an MFA in poetry from University of California, Irvine, and an MFA in fiction from University of Miami. You can find her on Twitter @Kavetchnik.

We would also like to recognize the strong collections submitted by the finalists and semi-finalists, listed in alphabetical order: 

FINALISTS

• Thirteen Moons by Robert Carney
• From the Dictionary of Geological Terms by Jolie B Kaytes
• Easy Street by Cindy King
• Salt, Rock, Spine by Abby Murray
• Beautiful Water by Sara Shearer
• Endangered Animals by Elizabeth Vignali

SEMI-FINALISTS

• Forty-Six Degrees North by Milton Bates
• This Document Should Be Retained as Evidence of Your Journey by Colleen Coyne
• Sewn from Water by Deborah Rosch Eifert
• Riverside Song by CJ Giroux
• In Knots by Jacob Hall
• Ten Minutes North by Hope Jordan
• The Replaceable by Toshiaki Komura
• Dark Matter by Martha McCollough
• To Where Are We Bound by Benjamin Mueller
• River Carry Me by Robert Okaji

Many thanks to all the writers that submitted to the 2018 Split Rock Review Poetry Chapbook Contest. We received over 100 manuscripts this year, and it was a very difficult decision due to the high quality of submissions. Thank you for your continued support and interest in Split Rock Review!