April 1, 2021
We are pleased to announce the winners of the 2021 Ken Ebert Poetry Prize. Our thanks and appreciation go out to the final judge, Joseph Ross, and to every poet who submitted to the contest. It is thrilling to know there are so many fine poets in our home county, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.
1st Place
Annie Ginder
2nd Place
Dana Kinsey
3rd Place
Louise Imm-Cooper
January 31, 2021
The Ken Ebert Poetry Prize
Iris G. Press is pleased to announce the Ken Ebert Poetry Prize contest in honor of Lancaster County philanthropist and humanitarian, Ken Ebert. For many years, Ken has enthusiastically supported and promoted poets from all of the county. Naming this contest in his honor is our tiny gesture of thanks and appreciation. The final judge is the acclaimed, award-winning Washington, D.C. poet Joseph Ross.
* Entrants must be current Lancaster County, Pennsylvania residents, 18 or older.
* Please send only one original poem, on any theme and in any form, for consideration.
*Your entry must be unpublished, either in print or online, including personal blogs, Facebook
or Twitter. It cannot be currently under review for possible publication.
*Your entry must not exceed 52 lines.
*Submit your typed entry as a Microsoft Word attachment by email to irisGpress@gmail.com.
*All entries must be received by March 7, 2021.
*Please submit your name, address, phone number, the title of your poem, and a brief biography
on a separate page.
*Please do not put your name, address, phone number, or biography on the entry itself. Our
judges will see only the poem.
*Confirmation of receipt and comments on your entry will not be provided, nor will your entry
be returned to you. All decisions made by the judges and administrators are final.
The writer of the winning poem will receive $100 and publication of the poem in Fledgling Rag
#21. Second place will receive $50 and third place will receive $25. The results will be announced
on April 15 at and on the Iris G. Press Facebook page.
Honestly
There are days when
being in this world
feels more like
not being in this world
where deep inside
our collective body
is an itinerary of agony
weeping the recent loss of lineages
beneath the stretched skin
each vein
quietly mapping
the mountain of damage
that this year has been
not one of us
is a cartographer
who knows how to chart
the isolation we’ve felt
riding these backroads
what prayers to pray
to invoke traveling mercies
for what is in the fork ahead
if we need to exit
this viral highway to hell
to grab a bite
of this grief
for which we have no appetite
when do we tell
the bright-eyed ones
who are just planning their journeys
that this world is not theirs
and the elders
when do we tell them
that it never was
Annie Ginder is a poet who lives in the southern end of Lancaster County with her husband, son, daughter and Rottweiler. She currently works on the front lines of the opioid epidemic connecting those who are seeking help to the services that are most appropriate for them.
“The world’s most famous skin-lightening cream is called “Fair & Lovely.”
~Shelina Janmohamed, Love in a Headscarf
Unfair
That melanin has been cursed
so those who peddle glamour
swirl bleach into dainty glass jars
6,000 tons of whitening potion.
They slather cream on thirsty skin
mercury-laced liniment.
Mirrors return charred bodies
that risked burns for approval.
Who decides who’s fairest
of them all in a world white
to its moonstone bones
spinning in endless inertia?
Funny how indisputably golden
sun rays deepen skin tone
enrich it with radiance
fair(y) godmother it to lovely.
Dana Kinsey is a writer, actor, and teacher with poetry published by Writers Resist, One Art, Broadkill Review, For Women Who Roar’s 2020 Anthology, Spillwords, Fledgling Rag, and Silver Needle Press. Her prose appears in Teaching Theatre and Tweetspeak. Dana's play, WaterRise, was produced at the Gene Frankel Theatre in Greenwich Village for the Radioactive Women’s Festival. Visit www.wordsbyDK.com.
Longing…
In the still dark hours of the night, when the moonlight is faintly visible,
I reach out for you
the sheet is smooth, unwrinkled, untouched
There’s no back to caress, no chest to nestle my head on, no long, muscular legs
wrapped around my short fleshier ones
Just empty space
When your arms encircled my body, it relaxed, knowing that nothing could hurt me as long as you were here.
Now I wake in the murky darkness your strong gentle hands and the warmth
of your skin touching mine are gone.
Turning in the bed, I hug myself, knowing you are forever a part of me
but still yearning for you
Overwhelmed by grief, I weep.
Writing, both poetry and short stories, are adventures of the moment for Louise Imm-Cooper. The poems she writes, sometimes in rhyme and often in free verse, are inspired by people, experiences and feelings of joy, sorrow, and deeply held beliefs in her life that compel her to put pen to paper.
Judge's Comment
The journey of this poem is timely, alive, and heartbreaking. We get an “itinerary of agony,” we end up “riding these backroads,” and then we wonder about our place in a world we cannot control. The two questions that close this poem confront us all. How do we tell the young that “this world is not theirs” and how do we tell elders “it never was.” This is the present moment turned into beauty.
Judge's Comment
One of the dangers of white supremacy is clear in this poem. That people would harm themselves to look like someone else. “Who decides…” is the right question.
Judge's Comment
The sensual details of this poem grab the reader, even though they describe the one who is no longer there. Absence and presence both breathe in this poem.
Joseph Ross is the author of four books of poetry: Raising King (2020), Ache (2017), Gospel of Dust (2013) and Meeting Bone Man (2012). His poems have appeared in the New York Times Magazine, many anthologies and journals. He teaches at Gonzaga College High School in Washington, D.C.
About Us
* Since 2004, we have published 16.5 books of poetry and 20 issues of our poetry journal, Fledgling Rag. Our focus is on poetry, and we spend more time than most people reading and listening to it. We pay attention to nearly everything poetry.
* Iris G. Press is the publisher of the poetry of Marty Esworthy, Rebecca Gonzalez, Le Hinton, and Jeff Rath.
* Through its I. Giraffe Press imprint, we publish the work of Daina Savage, poet laureate emerita of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.
* Iris G. Press publishes a yearly poetry journal, Fledgling Rag. Poets are solicited by the editors of the journal.