(Note: The official nominations for short fiction and poetry have been announced. Read the announcement here.)The Pushcart Prize - Best of the Small Presses series, published every year since 1976, is "the most honored literary project in America. Hundreds of presses and thousands of writers of short stories, poetry and essays have been represented in the pages of these annual collections."
Our distinguished judge for our Pushcart Prize nominations is award-winning poet Joanie Mackowski. She is an Assistant Professor at Cornell University and the author of two books of poems: View from a Temporary Window (University of Pittsburgh Press January 2010) and The Zoo (University of Pittsburgh Press 2002). She received her BA from Wesleyan University, her MFA from the University of Washington, and her PhD from the University of
Missouri. Her awards include the Emily Dickinson Prize from the Poetry Society of America in 2008, the Associated Writing Programs Award in Poetry in 2000, the Kate Tufts Discovery Prize in 2003, a Rona Jaffe Foundation Grant, and a Wallace Stegner Fellowship. Professor Mackowski's poems have appeared in The Best American Poetry 2009, Best American Poetry 2007, The Yale Review, The American Scholar, New England Review, among many others.But before we announce her final nominations, we would like to first share with you Professor Mackowski's shortlist of nine poems. She described these poems as having a "rich, inventive, and clattery language use." These poems deal with "unusual subject matter", exhibit "coherence without convention", and are "provocative".
The Shortlist
1. As Far as Cho-Fu-Sa by Mookie Katigbak-Lacuesta (Philippines)
"What I am, ever, is this: composure of stone.../ ...This claw of stars/ Must constellate somewhere into a bear,/ Else names would lie..."
Mookie Katigbak-Lacuesta hails from Manila and holds an MFA from the New School University in NYC. Her first book of poetry, The Proxy Eros, was published in 2008 by Anvil Publishing Inc., the foremost publishing house in the Philippines. Her work has been published in The New York Quarterly and will appear in the forthcoming issue of Defunct, an online literary magazine. She has also received Palanca and Philippines Free Press awards, the top literary honors in the Philippines.2. Bloodlines by Cathy Linh Che (Vietnam/USA)
"... That’s poison drawn out./ When I dig in,/ the bloodlines emerge,/ rib from spine,/ each line a bone,/ each bone/ a story..."
Cathy Linh Che was born in Los Angeles in 1980. Her parents immigrated to America in 1976, after spending a year in a refugee camp in the Philippines. A graduate from New York University's MFA program, she is a current Kundiman fellow and recipient of fellowships from the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown and from Poets & Writers, Inc. Her current projects include: collecting for an anthology of writing by children of the Vietnam War and editing Paperbag: an online journal of the arts, which can be found at www.paperbagazine.com.3. Camera 1 by Oliver de la Paz (Philippines/USA)
"... Because of my hunger, this image is not a salve or a slave but a want. I want the boats to come back. Listen again. Throats are calling from the shoals..."
Oliver de la Paz is the author of three collections of poetry, Names Above Houses, Furious Lullaby (SIU Press 2001, 2007), and Requiem for the Orchard (U. of Akron Press 2010), winner of the Akron Prize for poetry chosen by Martìn Espada. He co-chairs the advisory board of Kundiman, a not-for-profit organization dedicated to the promotion of Asian American Poetry. A recipient of a NYFA Fellowship Award and a GAP Grant from Artist Trust, his work has appeared in journals like Virginia Quarterly Review, North American Review, Tin House, Chattahoochee Review, and in anthologies such as Asian American Poetry: The Next Generation. He teaches at Western Washington University. Visit him at http://oliverdelapaz.com4. House and Man by Nicholas YH Wong (Malaysia)
"... The coins, so I read, were older, kept/ beneath their bases. I was no longer/ a keeper of coins, so no one ran the risk/ of pillars crumbling before the house did./ But such fidelity finds no fortune..."
Nicholas YH Wong is a recipient of the Academy of American Poets Award in 2008 and 2010. He studies Comparative Literature & Society at Columbia University and is working on his first poetry collection, Extinction Suite. His poems have appeared in The Rialto, Southeast Asian Review of English, and The Columbia Review, among others. He is currently a fellow at the beautiful La Muse (Languedoc, France), working on pieces about Cathar history, Occitan culture and troubadour verse.5. First Person Indefinite by Sonam Kachru (India)
"It was not always submarine./ There was life in the bodies we left by the water./ You thought them, together, unlikely to be either/ A lost seabird beside its reflection in water, or/ Distracted branches in half-open shutters..."
Sonam Kachru is a Kashmiri and was last seen working towards a PhD at the University of Chicago as an international student. This poem is from a collection he has tentatively titled: The Unbearable Likeness of Unbecoming Splendor. Kachru is at present completing a book-length project, Make Humans Again: Voices From Kashmir, an illustrated book of contemporary poetry translated into English from Kashmiri. Initial work from this project has been accepted for publication in Another Chicago Magazine, Greater Kashmir, and Words Without Borders.6. Paradise by Luisa A. Igloria (Philippines)
"... Sometimes they trekked/ through red earth... if only/ to watch the moon grow flagrant, saying so little/ it was a silence she came to mistake for habit—/ light's silver coin, surely being offered and not merely held/ over the water, inscrutable/ at their feet..."
Award-winning poet Luisa A. Igloria currently directs Old Dominion University's MFA Creative Writing Program. Originally from Baguio City, Philippines, she is the author of JUAN LUNA'S REVOLVER (2009 Ernest Sandeen Prize in Poetry, University of Notre Dame Press), TRILL & MORDENT (WordTech Editions 2005), and 8 other books. Her recent awards include the 49th Parallel Prize in Poetry from the Bellingham Review, the 2007 James Hearst Poetry Prize (selected by former US Poet Laureate Ted Kooser), the 2006 National Writers Union Poetry Prize (selected by Adrienne Rich), and the 2006 Stephen Dunn Award for Poetry.7. Television by Sumana Roy (India)
"... Desire/ is ceremony. All is a picture – baby food, insomnia, honey./ Attachment grows in breadth, like suspicion – a queue of blinks..."
Sumana Roy's first novel, Love in the Chicken's Neck, was long listed for the Man Asian Literary Prize 2008. She teaches at the Department of Humanities, Jalpaiguri Government Engineering College. She is working on a collection of stories tentatively titled SML.8. The Irishman in My Backyard by Trisha Bora (India)
"... I traced the chisel’s faint path back/ ... —a shy world/ caught in the tangle of another man’s/ net, dark tea that burnt our tongues and/ filled dainty china cups.../ and the writing of these/ practiced words, put neatly, side by/ side, in another man’s strange tongue."
Trisha Bora is an editor and writer who has been away from her hometown – Assam – for many years now and currently lives in Delhi. She studied Lierature at Delhi University, and started a career in publishing immediately after. Her poems have been published at Ultra Violet, nth position, Pyrta Journal, and Poetry Super Highway among others. She is working on her first collection of poetry.9. The Wallace Line by Nicolas YH Wong (Malaysia)
"...I’m jealous. Of both your findings, the last/ survived the beauty of my homeland, with/ flying frogs and fierce beetles, and the Wallace/ line marking the side I stood on, who we’ve/ come from..."
Nicholas YH Wong is a recipient of the Academy of American Poets Award in 2008 and 2010. He studies Comparative Literature & Society at Columbia University and is working on his first poetry collection, Extinction Suite. His poems have appeared in The Rialto, Southeast Asian Review of English, and The Columbia Review, among others. He is currently a fellow at the beautiful La Muse (Languedoc, France), working on pieces about Cathar history, Occitan culture and troubadour verse.We will announce the selected five poems (that we will send to the Pushcart Prize committee for consideration) by the end of this month. Thank you very much to these writers for the contributions and for allowing us to publish these admirable pieces of poetry.
Note:
Submissions to Asia Writes are open year round and works are eligible for nomination to the three anthologies (Best of the Net, Best of the Web, Pushcart Prize). If you would like to contribute, please read our submission guidelines. Previously featured writers are most welcome to submit new works.
