Catamaran Poetry Prize
for West Coast Poets 2024
The Winner of the 2024 Poetry Prize is
One Needful Song
by Jeanne Wagner
from Kensington, California
Jeanne Wagner is the author of four chapbooks and three full-length collections: The Zen Piano-mover, which won the NFSPS Poetry Prize, In the Body of Our Lives, published by Sixteen Rivers Press, and Everything Turns Into Something Else, published in 2020 as runner-up for the Grayson Book Prize. Her more recent awards include the Joy Harjo Award, the Naugatuck Prize and the Cloudbank Prize. Her work has appeared in North American Review, Cincinnati Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, Shenandoah and The Southern Review.
About the Catamaran Poetry Prize
for West Coast Poets
The Catamaran Poetry Prize encourages the submission of previously unpublished poetry manuscripts across a range of styles, themes, and forms. This contest is for a collection of poetry only. The prize is only open to West Coast poets living in California, Washington, Oregon, Alaska, and Hawaii. A prize of $1,000 and publication in book form is awarded to the poetry collection selected by the judge. Submissions are accepted from Feb 15th through June 15th.
Congratulations to our 2024 Runners Up, Finalists, and Semifinalists. Each will have a poem selected for publication in the Fall 2024 issue of Catamaran.
First Runner Up
Cartographies of Home by Priscilla Long from Seattle, Washington
Second Runner Up:
Transgender Book of the Living and Dead by Misha Moon from Portland, Oregon
Finalists:
Before Anything is Dust by Tobey Hiller from San Rafael, California
Self Portrait with Sediment by Melody Wilson from Beaverton, Oregon
Still Life with Orange Peel by Charles Hood from Palmdale, California
Semifinalists:
Light Thief by David Sullivan from Santa Cruz, California
The Apocalypse Afterparty by Allison de Freese from Portland, Oregon
Statement on this year’s Catamaran Poetry Prize
Many thanks to all the poets who entered their work for this year’s Catamaran Poetry Prize. The pool of manuscripts was the largest we have ever received. That number alone is testimony to the incredible vitality of the poetry community on the West Coast of the United States. The poetry collections submitted were remarkably varied in their styles, projects, and subject matter. The regions that inspired the poems ranged from the Pacific Northwest to Southern California, The Northern California Bay Area, and Alaska. Many highly competitive manuscripts were entered, and to honor that, we have recognized, in addition to this year's winner, two contenders for the prize - a first and second runner up, as well as three finalists and two semifinalists. Congratulations to all the poets whose excellent work is celebrated here.
About D.A. Powell:
The judge for our 2024 Catamaran poetry prize was D.A. Powell.
D. A. Powell earned an MFA at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. His first three collections of poetry, Tea, (1998), Lunch (2000), and Cocktails (2004), are considered by some to be a trilogy on the AIDS epidemic. Lunch was a finalist for the National Poetry Series, and Cocktails was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for poetry. His next two books were Chronic (2009), which won the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award; and Useless Landscape, or A Guide for Boys (2012) won the National Book Critics Circle Award for poetry. Powell is also the author of Repast (2014). Powell has taught at Harvard University, Columbia University, and the University of San Francisco. He has been awarded the Lyric Poetry Award from the Poetry Society of America, a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, and a Paul Engle Fellowship from the James Michener Foundation.