Pushcart Prize Nominations 2017

Daughter Shaman Sings Blood Anthem (Kristi Carter) cover: Nicci Mechler

MEXICAMERICANA by Eloisa Amezcua (cover artwork: Sharmon Davidson)

Feeding the Dead by M. Brett Gaffney (cover art: Mary Chiaramonte)

bramble&thorn (anthology) cover photo by: Olivia Edvalson

Our 2017 Pushcart Prize nominations are drawn from our anthology, bramble & thorn, and chapbooks from this year’s line:

“Tincture” by Emily Corwin from bramble & thorn

“Vestigial Epithalamium” by Erinn Batykefer from bramble & thorn

“Baba Yaga: Her Almost Origin Story” by Minadora Macheret from bramble & thorn

“Watching Underworld, Inc Episode 3: Human Cargo” by Eloisa Amezcua from Mexicamericana (Porkbelly Press, 2017)

“Hellhound, Lost” by M. Brett Gaffney from Feeding the Dead (Porkbelly Press, 2017)

“My Mother Is Certain” by Kristi Carter from Daughter Shaman Sings Blood Anthem (Porkbelly Press, 2017)

Bettering American Poetry 2016 Nominations

Porkbelly Press’ Nominees from 2016

Shakeema Smalls for “rût.” First printed in Sugared Water #005, December 2016.

Michal Leibowitz for “In Sderot.” First printed in Persephone’s Daughters inaugural issue, reprinted in Sugared Water #005, December 2016.

James A. H. White for “Okaasan [Mother].” First printed in chapbook hiku [pull] (Porkbelly Press, 2016).

Congratulations & good luck to all nominees! It’s been our pleasure to nominate this work for such an outstanding project.

From Bettering American Poetry’s nominations page

We want work that is unafraid to look, to shake shit up, to speak. We are interested in poems that challenge patriarchal and white supremacist power structures. We love poems that burn misogynist, homophobic, ableist, transphobic, racist, xenophobic attitudes and behaviors at the core. Poems that critique the dominant culture and flummox the status quo, that speak with voices historically misrepresented, underrepresented, censored, and silenced make us sit up and listen hard. | more

Related Reading

» Bettering American Poetry‘s website
» An interview series with poets in Bettering American Poetry‘s 2015 anthology via VIDA

Pushcart Prize Nominations

We’re very pleased to announce our Pushcart Prize nominations for 2016. Congratulations to the nominees, and thank you so much for sharing in your poetic journey with us. (All of our nominations this year are poems.) We’ve pulled works from our micros, chaps, lit mag, and anthos:

from our chapbooks & micros

“from her mouth” from bindweed & crow poison: small poems of stray girls, fierce women (Porkbelly Press, 2016) by Robin Turner

“Sawaruna [“Do Not Touch”]” from hiku [pull] (Porkbelly Press, 2016) by James A. H. White

“The Pond in the Corner of the Yard” from A Map of the Farm Three Miles from the End of Happy Hollow Road (Porkbelly Press, 2016) by Amorak Huey

from our lit mag, Sugared Water, #005

“When I Grieve” by Wren Hanks : also appears in slightly different from in Ghost Skin (Porkbelly Press, 2016)

“According to My Father Peaches Ward Off Spirits” by Su Cho

from our anthology SKY+SEA

“Love Letter to Galileo: Axis” by Stacey Balkun