The Laura (Riding) Jackson Foundation is delighted to announce the prize winners of our first annual poetry competition. We received over 160 entries inspired by COVID-19. Sean Sexton, Indian River Poet Laureate, presided over a panel of judges that included Carrie Adams and Janna Schledorn to select our winners. All entries were coded so that the judging would be blind. It was a very difficult decision for our judges, but we are thrilled to share with you the winners and their poems.
In addition to the winners below, we have selected a number of other poems and some writings from our K-12 competition that will be published in a print book and on our website soon! Stay tuned for that. Print versions will be available for a suggested donation of $10 at the LRJF Writing Center and at the Vero Beach Book Center.
Browse all of the winning poetry below, or head specifically to local winners or non-local winners.
Christina Kilby
Safekeeping Where do all the touches go for safekeeping? If I could collect them in a jar Like a child’s treasure I’d bury them in a secret place And take you there one day Lead you by the hand To…
Mark Hinkley
Monarchs Like gray haired first graders, They sit all in a line in their small chair desks, silent and alone, under the stale blue fluorescence of the nursing home. Polaroid portraits border the bulletin board, that they themselves do not…
Anthony Nanetti
An Essential Worker Opines She was waiting in line Masked and standing on a floor decal As I rang out preceding customers Hoping she would land at my register Which she did with a Fiji and SunChips Bright eyed even…
Rikki Santer
Landmark The train like a wailing pronoun in the dark breath of night when quarantine responds to quarantine and I ask myself how do I get from here to the rest of the world or scale a kinder incline beyond…
Pat Draper
A Time Like This I never want to forget those twenty-six hours you last came home- The soft knock on my bedroom door at five in the morning, jumping on my bed sprawled across the foot telling stories of Baghdad…