We are thrilled to announce the winners of the 2014 Undergraduate and High School Poetry Scholarships! Michael Mlekoday, winner of the 2012 Stan and Tom Wick Poetry Prize, selected the undergraduate winners from a pool of truly remarkable finalists.
Undergraduate Winners
1st Place: Ryan Lind for “A Kandiyohi County Road" (see poem below)
2nd Place: Amber Dean for "I was taught"
3rd Place: Kinsey Brown for "Witchcraft"
High School Winner
1st Place: Sydney Vargo
Congratulations to all of the winners, and thank you to everyone who submitted!
A Kandiyohi County Road
I don’t know how I got there
to New London, where he was building
a new county road ex nihilo,
as darkness began dividing the day.
Other colors retired; the sky, still blue,
made a silhouette of the Caterpillar
pushing gravel where a slough used to be,
parting water from waters, from itself.
I knew that machine was brightly
colored, though on that ridge it looked black.
And I knew he was something, too;
yet people still say my father is nothing.
I have seen him in relief, in the dim hours,
taming the earth, in the beginning
of those long shadows. And I have watched
his exhaust become atmosphere.
He showed me artifacts,
the arrowheads collected in his pockets—
those sacred tools recovered from the earth
which scared off ancient deer.
He told me the day’s legends,
numbering the pheasants and grouse
that flew from the brush that morning
before the sun was made.