2020 Sacred Poetry Writing Contest

Congratulations to the winners of CLA’s 2020 Sacred Poetry Contest Winners! We thank all who entered into the contest.

Please read the beautiful winning entries below!

First Place: Judith Sornberger
Second Place: Nicole Rollender
Third Place: Whitney Rio-Ross

First Place - Judith Sornberger (judithsornberger.net/)

Comments on The Dalmatian and the Dove from Judge Sally Thomas

This poem springs to life with its first triggering question, engaging the strangeness of the painting to which it responds. Its speaker clearly knows that the painting is strange; there’s no way around that. Yet the poem never asks the too-obvious why:  Why a dalmatian? Instead, its speaker asks, Why not? This gesture in itself points to an affirmation of the ways of God, often inexplicable, yet always, upon reflection,  ringing true. The whole poem represents an engagement with precisely this kind of serious theological reflection. From moment to moment, it re-narrates the painting to tease out its truth, never stating what is obvious, but expanding on the mysteries the visual work suggests through close examination of its elements. From line to line, the language is assured, concrete, full of internal music. The voice, which establishes itself in that opening question, follows its line of questioning without irony, but with an echo of humor. At the poem’s close, the way the two characters, dove and dog, connect across “eternity’s dark backdrop” signals a resolution which does not close the narrative off, but opens it into an unwritten future. The dog is not satisfied, but “tastes a new hunger.” The resonance of that final image, as it echoes on the surrounding white space, is paradoxically what satisfies.

Second Place - Nicole Rollender (nicolemrollender.com/)

Comments on Meditation Excerpt: St. Cecilia’s Song from Judge Sally Thomas

The way this prose poem maps its way forward, in leaps from image to image, from assertion to question, generates a sense of cognitive gaps of the sort that, in a conventional poem, are figured by line and stanza breaks, the pressure of white space on language. From moment to moment, the imagery is rich and striking, shot through with ardor, as it engages with the martyrdom of the young virgin saint. As the title suggests, the poem does read like an excerpt, a fragment of a longer meditative work, with a sense of mystery reaching beyond the straight boundaries of the text on the page. The language itself is often fragmented, suggesting that it belongs to some larger body of more fully realized thought. A strong and beautiful offering overall.

Third Place - Whitney Rio-Ross (instagram.com/whitlynnrioross)

Comments on Lady of Sorrows from Judge Sally Thomas

This is a poem vivid in its details, even as its subtle mostly-trimeter pulse restrains the pathos of the scenes it tracks. I appreciated this poem’s imaginative re-narration of the triggering artwork, seeing its subject in the sorrows of ordinary women, who grapple with large and small feminine and maternal crises.  Its success as an ekphrastic poem lies in its simultaneous engagement with and transcendence of the work of art to which it responds.

2020 Advent Writing Contest

Congratulations to the winners of CLA’s 2020 Advent Writing Contest Winners! We thank all who entered into the contest.

Please read the beautiful winning entries below!

Grand Prize: Ashley Alvarez
Honorable Mention: Tamara Nicholl-Smith, Johanna Caton, O.S.B., Marjorie Maddox, Roseanne T. Sullivan

Grand Prize - Ashley Alvarez

From Elizabeth, Who was Called Barren

Yet who am I that after long years
of wrinkled fingers folded in prayer
unanswered, this desert-womb should bloom
and she should visit me, her eyes still
reflecting angel-glow, travel-dust
thick on her sandal thongs, radiant
with pregnant joy? Who am I that she
whom God has blessed should greet me, that we
should wait, hands-to-belly, listening
inwardly to the hidden language
of heartbeat and limb? Am I to keep
vigil with the mother of my Lord,
awaiting labor pains, awaiting
a prophet—awaiting our King?

Ashley Alvarez graduated from the University of St. Thomas with a bachelor's degree in English Writing. Her poetry and prose have appeared in the student-run publications Laurels and Thoroughfare as well as in Ever Eden Literary Journal.

Honorable Mention - Tamara Nicholl-Smith

Advent Mass: 6:03 pm on a Saturday at St. Anthony of Padua Catholic Church

An old man sharp in a plaid shirt
and blue sweater vest,
moves like a turtle in a parade
down the aisle towards his pew,
his float a wheeled walker.

He is singing the opening hymn;
one of six voices that struggle to fill the white air
lit cool fluorescent above the scratched pews

His voice, brittle and yellow as spent leaves
reaches for the rafters. He knows the verses,
lines, like Polaroids, remember all his friends,
friends whose voices used to join,
who have moved away or shuffled on.
He sings as if they were there.
O Come O Come Emmanuel,
the final strains fade in his throat
as he arrives radiant to his pew.

II

Up in the choir loft
a teenage girl strums an out of tune guitar.
Her voice warbles like a bird with a cold,
barely skimming the edges of melody.
On a refrain, her voice cracks,
and in the space between right notes
God slides in.

III

Holy the cinderblock walls, Holy the stations of the cross,
Holy the pews that are empty, Holy the pews that are full,
Holy the stone Mary whose arms embrace the apse,
Holy the stone Joseph whose gaze fills the nave,
Holy the stark Jesus, hanging front and center,
Holy the evergreen wreath, counting down the weeks,
Holy the tired hymnal pages, Holy the out of tune guitar,
Holy the Holy that makes cathedrals of everything.

That which was empty will be full.

Tamara Nicholl-Smith's poetry has appeared on two Albuquerque city bus panels, one parking meter, numerous radio shows, a spoken-word classical piano fusion CD, and in several publications, including the Mutablis Press anthology Enchantment of the Ordinary, Kyoto Journal Issue 95, The Examined Life Journal Issue 8 (also forthcoming in issue 9), and Catholic Arts Today. 

She is currently pursuing an MFA in Creative Writing at the University of Saint Thomas in Houston and is developing a creative productivity workshop. She has been featured locally on KPFT, in Public Poetry’s Library Series, and selected multiple times as a Houston Poetry Festival juried poet.

Honorable Mention - Johanna Caton, O.S.B.

The Waiting

Inspired by St Bernard of Clairvaux’s Homily on Our Lady’s Fiat.
Homily 4, 8-9: Opera omnia, Edit. Cisterc. 4 [1966], 53-54

What sigh or song or sob flew out, unleashed
From angel lips, as Spirit’s fathering Word?
What innocence in girl and angel stirred,
As each revered the grace that streamed from each?

What silence took the girl, stunned by his tale –
What beauty, unimagined, flamed and burned?
What wind chimes, these, by Spirit’s breath were turned
To sounds so far from sense that senses failed?

But Gabriel stands silent till her voice
Shall spill the sound that slowly fills her soul,
Shall soar into the void as spheres unroll.
But first, the listening night awaits her choice.

Now Adam weeps. O Mary, pity grief,
And Abraham’s sore willingness recall;
See Isaac kneel, with priests and prophets all –
O, speak the word, conceive the world’s relief.

We wait. We wait. Hasten, thou Blessed One.
Believe! Receive the Seed of God – fear not.
At last, so small, so great her word: “Fiat.”
“His will be done, be done, be done, be done.”

Johanna Caton is a Benedictine nun living in Kent, England. Her poetry has appeared in various publications, including The Christian Century, The Windhover, The Greenhills Literarhy Lantern, Time of Singing, The Catholic Poetry Room (website connected with integratedcatholiclife.org), Leaping Clear, The Tiny Seed Literary Journal.

Honorable Mention - Marjorie Maddox

Genealogy

Chavah,
when He breathed
into you—sleek bone chalice
where spirit un-caged choice—
and His wind swirled up and out
of you, Mother of All Living,
to her, Mother of All Who Truly Live,
to him, Second Adam, the same
naming of breath, chest, lips as the one
sleeping so still beside you,
First Adam’s eyes (and yours)
not yet seeing/tasting/knowing

that sweet breeze of Holy, tempered tsunami
that whirls and weaves the world together.
O sacred heritage:
this creator/descendant resurrecting
your dust into twin already cleansed
and choosing birth of the swaddled son,
the one who breathed pure into her,
Mother Mary, but first life into you,
Chavah.

Winner of America Magazine’s 2019 Foley Poetry Prize and Professor of English and Creative Writing at Lock Haven University, Marjorie Maddox has published 11 collections of poetry—including Transplant, Transport, Transubstantiation (Yellowglen Prize); True, False, None of the Above (Illumination Book Award Medalist); Local News from Someplace Else; Weeknights at the Cathedral ; Perpendicular As I (Sandstone Book Award)—the short story collection What She Was Saying (Fomite Press); four children’s and YA books—including Inside Out: Poems on Writing and Readiing Poems with Insider Exercises (Finalist Children’s Educational Category 2020 International Book Awards), and A Crossing of Zebras: Animal Packs in Poetry; I’m Feeling Blue, Too!—Common Wealth: Contemporary Poets on Pennsylvania (co-editor); Presence: A Journal of Catholic Poetry (assistant editor); and 600+ stories, essays, and poems in journals and anthologies. Her book Begin with a Question is forthcoming from Paraclete Press in 2021. For more information, please see www.marjoriemaddox.com

Honorable Mention - Roseanne T. Sullivan

The Love Song of Our Lady of O

Expectans Expectavi
With expectation I have waited for the Lord,
and he was attentive to me.— Psalm 39:2,
Douay Rheims Bible

Knowing you so near, I yearned to know you,
O Wisdom.
Trembling, I bent and bowed towards you,
O Lord.

Searching the Scriptures, I sought you,
O Root of Jesse.
Awaiting David’s son, I awaited you,
O Key of David.

Longing for light, I long longed for you,
O Dayspring.
Hoping, I hoped with all who hoped for you,
O King of Nations.

Expecting now, I expect you, tomorrow,
You are coming—through only human me—
Long desired One, to set your people free.
O God with us—Emmanuel.

Roseanne T. Sullivan is a writer with a deep interest in sacred art, sacred music, and liturgy. She has published articles and photos in Dappled Things, Latin Mass Magazine, the New Liturgical Movement, Homiletic and Pastoral Review, National Catholic Register, Regina Magazine, and other publications. Her posts are frequently included in the Best of Catholic blogging list of links at BigPulpit.com. She also posts column-length features and as an editor on Facebook pages for Catholic Arts Today, Benedict XVI Institute, Latin Mass Magazine, Dappled Things Journal, El Camino Real, Friends of Father Magin Catalá, and The St. Ann Choir. Weekly posts at Dappled Things’ Deep Down Things blog.