Congratulations to the Finalists and Winners of CLA’s 2026 Sacred Poetry Contest!

This year’s finalists are: Vivian I. Bikulege, Jerome Gagnon, Kristi A.S. Gomez, Maura Harrison, Robert Kirkendall, Joan Lange, Aline Lewis, Rhonda Melanson, Paul Pastor, Jess Pettit-Tarquinio, Arthur Powers, and M.D. Skeen.

From these finalists were chosen the winning entries listed below.

We encourage you to join us for the Virtual Celebration of Winners and Finalists with judge Daniel Tobin, on Monday, May 4, 2026, 7:00 p.m. CST. Please register at this link to attend via Zoom.

Please read the winning entries below.

First Place: Kristi A.S. Gomez
Second Place: Joan Lange
Third Place: M.D. Skeen

Honorable Mention: Jerome Gagnon, Aline Lewis, and Rhonda Melanson.

Meet Our Final Judge

Daniel Tobin is the author of ten books of poems, including Blood Labors, named one of the Best Poetry Books of the Year for 2018 by the New York Times and The Washington Independent Review of Books, The Stone in the Air: A Suite of Poems from the German of Paul Celan, and The Mansions, winner of the National Indie Excellence Award in Poetry.

His poetry has won many awards, among them the Massachusetts Book Award, the Julia Ward Howe Award, the Stephen Meringoff Award from the Association of Literary Scholars, Critics, and Writers, and fellowships from the NEA and the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation.

His critical and editorial works include Passage to the Center: Imagination and the Sacred in the Poetry of Seamus Heaney, The Book of Irish American Poetry from the 18th Century to the Present, Poet’s Work, Poet’s Play: Essays on the Practice and the Art (with Pimone Triplett), To the Many: The Collected Early Works of Lola Ridge, Awake in America, On Serious Earth: Poetry and Transcendence and most recently The Odeon: Essays on Poetry. A chapbook, From the Distances of Sleep: Gloss Arias I, appeared in 2025 from Staircase Books. Dusk, Empire: New and Selected Poems, will appear in 2026.

Follow this link to Dan Tobin’s website.

Honorable Mention Awards

The Honorable Mention designation is given to poems of exceptional merit who did not place in this year’s list of the top three award-winning poems. This year’s Honorable Mention designations are awarded to poets Jerome Gagnon, Aline Lewis, and Rhonda Melanson.

Honorable Mention
Jerome Gagnon

A Question of Light
afterMidnight Mass by Clarence Gagnon

Here come the faithful through the fallen snow
in their brown woolen capes and heavy coats.
Something like joy, I think, must lead them
through the white-clad town
to honor mystery, as if for the first time.

But what is this unexpected light, I wonder,
that meets them by the door,
bathing horse and buggy in its stream
and the scarlet sleigh, as well,
pointing as it does toward Bethlehem?

There must be a thousand candles burning
to cast such a glow,
or is it moonlight like an unseen eye
gazing down over all,
or else the hearts of pilgrims blazing? 

Sometimes I think it comes from the snow,
rendered in white on white, returning everything
to stillness —
not an answer, quite, but a welcoming —
have deepened my watch for that.

© Catholic Literary Arts

Honorable Mention
Aline Lewis

Descent
After Caravaggio’s The Scourging at the Pillar

Our Lord bends in demi plie.
He is our God in flesh
taking the fourth position
in this mournful ballet.

Naked, just as he was
at his baptism, joining us,
and upon him rested
the gentleness of a dove.

Standing again with sinful men,
his neck, stretched like a swan’s,
his skin thin, over clavicle,
and his pain is human. 

But the soldiers, they are brutal.
As boys, did they picture
torturing innocent victims,
dreaming of brave battles?

Who called them to join in this dance?
He who lurks in the dark?
Pilate? Or is it the one
much more ancient, perhaps?

One to untie the Lord’s sandal,
not from humility but for undoing
the epiphany of that day,
invoking the black to fall, 

when what’s heard are sounds of hate,
not love from the heavens,
though what happened then
will indeed recapitulate.

The Lord will descend, deeper still,
All the way to the harrowing of hell,

And, here, the Lord turns his face
toward one of his persecutors
with a tormented gaze.
If only that soldier could see his grace.

© Catholic Literary Arts

Honorable Mention
Rhonda Melanson

Little Fires Everywhere
after the painting Love At All Hours by Simon Silva

As you,
newborn mammal to my mama bear
burrow your face into my shoulder, 

I realize
you've no need to witness the morning star
that pale balloon in the window frame of dawn. 

Because
from an earlier existence, you carry
the flicker. I feel the heat from your breath 

the flames
seeking escape. Warmth is not for the weak.
In fact, love sets the room on fire-- demands 

fiery disregard
for all things indifferent, unnecessary, cruel.
The world knows these things and more. 

What small witness
shall there be, but you and me in the tiny
window of morning? When shall there be 

nothing
but little fires everywhere? What colours
will there be, bold in their space taking?

© Catholic Literary Arts

Third Place
M.D. Skeen

Surrender - A Ghazal in Ten Shers
After Stigmatization of St. Francis by Giotto di Bondone

I lift my arms to you Lord in complete surrender
And as unseen nails pierce my hands and feet, surrender.

Alone in these rough mountain heights beyond La Verna
In silent prayer I sought in my retreat surrender. 

Forty days and nights before the feast of Michaelmas
I fast there and, determined not to eat, surrender. 

Renouncing all possessions, I kneel in this rude robe.
My penury complete, this no effete surrender. 

The six-winged seraph shimmers fearsome in the sky
A blaze of flames slays my poor soul in sweet surrender. 

The love of God unquenchable consumes me with the
Marvelous ardor of my heart’s replete surrender. 

Holy, holy, holy! cries the angel from on high
Meanwhile I, as the sacred words repeat, surrender 

Christ’s weeping wounds, stripes upon his back, his pierced side
The holes become my own and they secrete surrender.

The vision fades but these crimson marks remain, reveal
The truth, my obvious and indiscrete surrender. 

Giovanni di Pietro di Bernardone
That name do I, and Francis, obsolete, surrender.

© Catholic Literary Arts

Comments on “Surrender – A Ghazal in Ten Shers” by Judge Daniel Tobin

In Giotto di Bondone’s “Stigmatization of St. Francis,” the saint kneels with nothing less than complete openness to the transfigured presence of Christ revealed in the sky from whose wounds laser-like lights fire into the newly enfleshed wounds of Francis whose own life becomes wholly Imago Christi, the image of Christ. How to render this moment in a poem, as in the painting? “Surrender” takes the formally brilliant tack of a ghazal, a Persian form culturally dedicated to longing and love, to give Francis’s voice its rich embodiment. “I lift my arms to you Lord in complete surrender / and as unseen nails pierce my hands and feet, surrender.” This first couplet, the matla, contains the quafiya (rhyme word) and radif (refrain) that plays out through the poem’s succeeding shers (thematically autonomous couplets). It is no small accomplishment to orchestrate a moving and strictly formal ghazal in English, and “Surrender” does so, in part by knowing when to enact its strategic variation—at precisely the moment the saint surrenders to “Christ’s weeping wounds.” Aptly, the poet pays homage in the matla (final couplet) to both Giotto and Francis, the artist and the saint, the saint who is also a poet of creational love.

Second Place
Joan Lange

Mother to Daughter
Inspired by the painting Amor A Todas Horas

Before you woke, I stood by the opened window
Wondering at morning’s red-hued hills
Draped like folds, a woven rebozo wrapping
The horizon. Beneath the window spread
Crimson roses, wet with dew, holding tightly
Each petal, waiting to unfold perfumed bloom. 

On the offering table near the window,
Three candles burned; smoke curled and rose and spread
Spiraling like a prayer over the hills.
Remembrance. Braiding my hair–each black strand tightly
Plaited–I recalled those who first wrapped
Me in my birth rebozo and dreamed of bloom. 

A black-eyed junco landed at the window–
The bird’s ebony eyes so like yours–and spread
Its wings, grasping my fallen hair strands tightly
In its beak, flying to nest on roses’ bloom,
Then weaving strands through twigs. And small white hills
Of brown-speckled eggs lay warmly wrapped. 

You woke, swaddled in white, the rebozo wrapped
‘Round. Your feather-soft arm curling tightly
Entwined my neck. We are one, just as these hills
And valleys, and nesting birds wreathe and spread
Bands of green, burnt umber, and vermillion bloom:
Creation’s revelation through this window.

But sun’s glare illuminated hills
Of Mount Cristo Rey. A writhing wrapped
Treacherous cliffs. Dark crevices clung tightly.
Yet by this mountain trail, beyond the window,                                                              
Fiery ocotillos flowered and spread
Emblems of God’s light, a red torchlike bloom. 

Hush now, my crooning will rise up these hills.
No bud flowers without unfolding its bloom,                                      
And only you can travel winding paths spread
Before you. These arms that now hold you tightly
Will open for another’s embrace. Wrapped
In His love, you’ll journey beyond this window.

© Catholic Literary Arts

Comments on “Mother to Daughter” by Judge Daniel Tobin

Simon Silva’s “Amor A Todos Horas” presents a glowing depiction of a woman gazing out a window at the prospect of new day, her child in her arms, the crucifix hung on the wall above the table beside her. The poet captures Silva’s allusive figuration of a latter-day Madonna in “Mother to Daughter,” where the woman’s address to the child comes to life with a descriptive vibrancy that matches the painting’s own rich colors and forms, its red-hued hills become “a woven rebozo wrapping / the horizon” where, “beyond the window / fiery octillos flowered and spread / emblems of God’s light.” What this poem does so beautifully is lift up a vision of God’s sacramental presence through the natural beauty of the world, through the extraordinarily ordinary blessings of human life lived in endurance and grace. With its sestina-like repetition of line-end words, the formal accomplishment of “Mother to Daughter” combines lyrical intricacy with vivid narrative progression—a gorgeously unfolding journey.

First Place
Kristi A.S. Gomez

Alone at Last
after Herodias – Ivan Kramskoy

A queenly gift like this is worth a rest.
The wood-green cast his skin now wears
declares he cannot cast his words at me.
Revenge is set upon a cold reflection. 

I sit and gaze. My arms raise prickled flesh
from this chill that billowed in, surely started
by the scarves my daughter caused to spin,
a splendent undulation meant to give
the air its heady rush. What a flattery
of silks—enough to dizzy any man,
let alone a vacillating king.
That should quell his stabs at introspection. 

And we’re alone at last, sober prophet.
On this occasion I devote my soft
attention to a humble victor’s final
interview. Do tell me what you’ve left
to say, you shaken reed, you crying voice,
you trunkless, wild-locked, locust-eating
beast, that dared give me correction? 

No heart is there to beat. And yet … his lips,
his eyes, though closed, seem merely dormant,
a moment in repose. Delusion. Curse
this passing fancy, strange imagination!
No judgment creases his complexion. 

I wait, but cannot hear a thing above
a storm of whispers catching hold of that
infernal breeze. Neither can I make
the voices out, refracted as they are
through scarlet, gold, and darkest drapery.
But coming to my ears, the highest ringing
stands above them all, as though it sings—
it almost sounds as though it calls,
You’re watching for the wrong Resurrection.

© Catholic Literary Arts

Comments on “Alone at Last” by Judge Daniel Tobin

Ivan Kramskoy’s “Herodias” unflinchingly depicts the familiar Gospel story of political violence and sacred violation by rendering the eponymous figure, her clothes dashed with blood, gazing curiously into John the Baptist’s shut eyes, his loosely hooded head on the proverbial platter.  In “Alone at Last,” the poet audaciously assumes the perspective of Herodias herself, at once alive to her own self-satisfaction at John’s perversely engineered murder and reflective of her daughter Salomé’s alluring performance before Herod. Gradually, yet startlingly, she also becomes more fully aware both of her own “infernal” machinations and what is, for her, a distant intimation of Truth that comes to her ears as song, a call from almost beyond the frame—the true Resurrection of the One heralded by the murdered Baptist. One imagines the poet engaging in a process akin to method acting (or a Vulcan mind-meld) to so inhabit the mastermind of John’s abhorrent demise. Yet, from the outset, it is the poet’s quietly ironic orchestration of iambic pentameter—“A queenly gift like this is worth a rest”—that sets the disturbingly easeful, even droll, reflection in motion toward its revelatory anti-revelation.