Poetry Book Awards 2023 – 1st Prize – Megan Fernandes
Congratulations – Megan Fernandes!
The winners of the 4th annual contest were as follows:
1st Prize I DO EVERYTHING I’M TOLD – Megan Fernandes, Portland, Oregon, USA
Megan Fernandes is a South Asian American writer living in NYC. She was born in Canada and raised in the Philadelphia area. Her family are East African Goans.
“A seething, edgy, mystical, surgically precise collection of love songs that hops from continent to continent. From L.A. to Lisbon, from Paris to Palermo, a subtle restlessness permeates these superbly crafted poems about lust, lovers, history, literature and specific moments in time and place.
The opening poem conjured up William Carlos Williams’ wheelbarrow for me while the prose that follows moves between Michelle Tea and the beats. The pace slowly quickens, we begin to travel, to move, to miscarry, to mature, to dream, to make love. ‘I fuck like a last request.’
A relationship in Shanghai becomes galactic, ‘on Saturn’s highway of ice.’ ‘you’ll hop a few rings,’ while there is always an awareness of time, ‘simultaneous dawns breaking over Hong Kong and Nairobi’.” – Dave Lewis
To find out more about her work, visit her website here.
2nd Prize WHY WE FISHED – Michael Loderstedt, Cleveland, Ohio, USA
3rd Prize AFTER THE FLOOD COMES THE APOLOGIES – Naoise Gale, Huddersfield, England
The Poetry Book Awards is an annual, international book award given to the best poetry books produced by indie writers, self-published authors or books published by small, truly independent presses.
Even though more and more people are enjoying and participating in creative writing it is becoming increasingly difficult to become traditionally published, especially in the poetry world. Most of the top book prizes and competitions do not allow self-published authors to enter. If they are allowed then many are extremely expensive leaving truly independent publishers, self-publishers and indie authors struggling to find the recognition they deserve. Instead of asking for huge sums of money from those shortlisted we instead charge an entry fee for each entry.
To find out more – click here.
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