I’ve been sitting on this news for awhile now, but the news is now public, so I’m thrilled to finally be able to share it! A poem I wrote in the duplex form, created by Jericho Brown and one of several forms taught in a class I took with Jen Karetnick last year, was chosen as the winner of this year’s Sweet Literary Poetry Contest. This is the first time I’ve ever won a contest for one particular poem, and it’s a feeling like no other to know that somehow this poem stood out enough to garner this remarkable recognition.

This win feels especially meaningful, because this poem is the first I have ever written about my 12-year-old Labrador, Finn, and also because it’s an offshoot or an unexpected reward that came from spending time learning something new. When I retired just over a year ago, I wanted something to look forward to, so I signed up for the form class Jen was teaching through The Poetry Salon. It was a three-hour class on Zoom and several different forms were covered — the duplex, the sonnenizio, the golden shovel, and I think the American sentence acrostic. Perhaps one more. But it was the duplex and the sonnenizio that I latched on to.

I’m beyond grateful — to the final judge, Meghan Sterling, for her generous comments, and to the entire Sweet team of editors, for their support. Sweet is planning a special issue featuring the collective work of all the winners and the finalists, set to go live on June 30, and I’ll be sure to share my poem then (along with more background about the situation that inspired it.)

Like all good news, this piece of specialness will fade, but I’ll always remember how deeply grateful I feel in this moment. Here’s the official announcement.