Pushcart Prize Nominations
Each year, the Iowa Poetry Association's Editor and Associate Editors collaborate to select nominees from the newest edition of Lyrical Iowa. Please join us in congratulating and wishing the nominees success.
About Pushcart Prize Nominations
The Pushcart Prize: Best of the Small Presses series, published every year since 1976, is the most honored literary project in America. Since 1976, hundreds of presses and thousands of writers of short stories, poetry and essays have been represented in their annual collections.
Winners of the Prize have included the likes of Charles Simic, Robert Pinsky, Joyce Carol Oates, Raymond Carver, Andre Dubus, Margaret Atwood, Richard Ford and John Updike, to name only a handful. No wonder simply being nominated for a Pushcart makes you feel as if you've won something.
Each fall, editors from small magazines and independent book presses worldwide are invited to submit up to six nominations. The nominations may be any combination of poetry, short stories, essays, memoirs or stand-alone excerpts from novels. Translations, reprints and both traditional and experimental writing are also welcome.
2027 Pushcart Prize Nominees
"Adagio" by Janvier Abramowitz (Coralville) ADAGIO An autumn breeze is the maestro that conducts rays of the sun through near empty tree limbs Light dances on closed eyelids So like the dappled notes of a clarinet playing on the radio Compositions meet The softest counterpoint An afternoon lullaby
"Woman with Plants" by Suzanna de Baca (Huxley) WOMAN WITH PLANTS (Inspired by Grant Wood's Woman with Plants) I did not know your mother well, only the hush that followed her name. She moved like winter light through a room, soft, deliberate, silver at the temples. Her hair, a cloud of weathered gray, framed a face lined by work and weather, hands broad as garden spades, palms remembering soil and soap. She bent toward the earth as if listening, coaxing green from reluctant ground, pressing seeds into darkness with the faith of an artist beginning in shadow. Quiet with her gifts, she worked without witness, deer lifting their antlers beneath her patient brush, circles of sinew and beads strung with small white feathers, each one signed with the small, sure curve of a feather. They say she burned every supper, forgot the clock for the sake of birds, stood dreaming at the window’s wide pane while cardinals stitched red through pine.
"What is a Burl?" by Margaret Hamilton (Jefferson) WHAT IS A BURL? The burl grows on the tree about Head height. A knob of wood, a pearl So round and uniform, a sphere, That’s camouflaged to match the trunk. Gray bark protruding from gray bark, A perfect orb, a world intact, An ecosystem of its own That sails upon a sea of wood And covers up an injury With knotted growth and hardened skin. Someday I’ll cut into the burl And hollow out its core to form a bowl Of swirling grain, some dark, some light. I’ll take this humble, flawless lump And burnish it until it glows. And, then, I’ll ask you why you cried Beneath this tree so long ago, And where your secrets hide inside The deep veneers of calm and bark.
"I am not a diamond" by Millie Malone Lill (Denison) I AM NOT A DIAMOND I do not want to be a diamond, Kept locked up in a vault For safe-keeping. I want to be sterling silver. Valuable, but not rare. Durable and bright Made more so by human touch.
"Never" by Linda Paul (Iowa City) NEVER You never wanted to throw anything away, The closet staggered with the heft Of your flannel shirts, Was flustered by your outdated suits; Felt sheepish by the stains On your trousers. You never came home again After your fall. The grand house we built Heaved a sigh of loneliness Remembering your silly pranks and impish smile Missing your messy presence. That we’ll never be together again Has not sunk in I boxed up your things and took them to Goodwill But kept your robe to wear So I could feel it touching me everywhere
"Accounting" by Maeva Shriner (Des Moines) ACCOUNTING the data flowed over me like water names, dates, dollar amounts all amounts to nothing input in the eyes output out the hands paying other people with my sweat handing them tickets to paradise and rest while i keep going like a wind-up toy