Announcing our 2023 Crab Creek Review Poetry Prize Recipient and Finalists!
Thank you to everyone who submitted to the 2023 Crab Creek Review Poetry Prize! This year, we had several strong submissions to the prize. A total of 23 went to the contest judge, Nicky Beer, with 19 being selected as semifinalists. We are very excited to now announce our contest recipient and the three finalist poems that were selected. The winner and all finalist poems will be published in the fall/winter issue in late 2023.
Winner: “Home” by Molly Bashaw
From Beer: With each passing stanza, the idea of home expands, becomes stranger, more compelling. The poem’s surrealism is effective, and never gimmicky, deepening a sense of longing as it accumulates. The final stanza becomes a literal, plaintive love letter to the “you” on the other side of all journeys.
Finalist: “Client Psychotherapy Intake Form”
by Nikki Ummel
From Beer: Reminiscent of Oliver de la Paz’s “Autism Screening Questionnaire” poems from The Boy in the Labyrinth, the speaker varies the degree to which they answer and resist the impersonal queries of the form in surprising ways, accumulating a kind of hypnotic momentum as the poem progresses. The imagery is witty, moving, and sharply original.
Finalist: “Dream with mother of pearl”
by Stacey Forbes
From Beer: It took less than three lines for this poem to completely get its hooks into me. It has the logic of a dream and the keenness of “a pearl-handled knife.” The voice is elusive, evasive, and irresistible.
Finalist: “On Never Seeing My Stillborn Son’s Eyes”
by Molly Bashaw
From Beer: The poem takes an incredible risk with its title that completely pays off, in terms of what the ensuing lines reveal and withhold. Beautiful.
by Nikki Ummel
From Beer: Reminiscent of Oliver de la Paz’s “Autism Screening Questionnaire” poems from The Boy in the Labyrinth, the speaker varies the degree to which they answer and resist the impersonal queries of the form in surprising ways, accumulating a kind of hypnotic momentum as the poem progresses. The imagery is witty, moving, and sharply original.
Finalist: “Dream with mother of pearl”
by Stacey Forbes
From Beer: It took less than three lines for this poem to completely get its hooks into me. It has the logic of a dream and the keenness of “a pearl-handled knife.” The voice is elusive, evasive, and irresistible.
Finalist: “On Never Seeing My Stillborn Son’s Eyes”
by Molly Bashaw
From Beer: The poem takes an incredible risk with its title that completely pays off, in terms of what the ensuing lines reveal and withhold. Beautiful.
About the Judge
Nicky Beer is a bi/queer writer, and the author of Real Phonies and Genuine Fakes (Milkweed, 2022). Her first two books, The Diminishing House (Carnegie Mellon, 2010) and The Octopus Game (Carnegie Mellon, 2015), were both winners of the Colorado Book Award for Poetry. She has received honors from the National Endowment for the Arts, MacDowell, the Poetry Foundation, and the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. She is an associate professor at the University of Colorado Denver, where she is a poetry editor for Copper Nickel.
Nicky Beer is a bi/queer writer, and the author of Real Phonies and Genuine Fakes (Milkweed, 2022). Her first two books, The Diminishing House (Carnegie Mellon, 2010) and The Octopus Game (Carnegie Mellon, 2015), were both winners of the Colorado Book Award for Poetry. She has received honors from the National Endowment for the Arts, MacDowell, the Poetry Foundation, and the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. She is an associate professor at the University of Colorado Denver, where she is a poetry editor for Copper Nickel.