Vallum Chapbook Award 2021 Finalist: Malcolm Sanger | Stone Series

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Finalist, Malcolm Sanger, Stone Series, Vallum Chapbook Award 2021

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Malcolm Sanger is a graduate student in Tiohtià:ke/Montréal. Originally from Toronto, he has studied anthropology and literature and worked in restaurants and reforestation.

 

 

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Malcolm Sanger is one of the finalists for the 2021 Vallum Chapbook Award for his chapbook Stone Series.

 

Stones Series is a group of poems set in Yucatán. They come from ethnographic fieldwork on tourism and migration in the region, work on Maya glyphs and sites by anthropologists Dennis Tedlock and Quetzil Casatañeda, and essays and poems by Charles Olson and Roman Jakobson. At its center is a list of words (or found poem) that someone Sanger lived with wrote down to translate. These words animate narratives and questions around materiality and language, sound and image, archaeology and anthropology, espionage and translation, analogy and parallelism.

 

Vallum Chapbook Award 2021 Finalist: Heather White | DES MONSTERAS

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DES MONSTERAS, Finalist, Vallum Chapbook Award 2021

signal bars | wi-fi | time | headphones | battery

<DES MONSTERAS share | send

We came off the mountain and I
was still holding the stick I’d used to
prod at the fire and as a baton to
conduct us, singing; also to point at
our paths and the solstice moon,
which was up in a cupboard the
clouds kept sliding open and shut.
Down by her orange car, Caroline
asked about the man I was now
seeing indoors. Waving the branch,
still conducting something, I tried to
summon how I felt. I liked a lot
about him but wasn’t sure if he
reciprocated: he was not very
demonstrative. I hadn’t used this
word in a while, but having dredged
it up I kept repeating it, hearing how
it tapped on the core of the issue,
feeling how it kicked at the tires.

…. trash | list | photo | edit | new

.

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Heather White lives in Montreal/Tiohtià:ke. Her writing on art and culture has appeared in Canadian Art, the Brooklyn Rail, Real Life, the Rumpus, and elsewhere. Her current practice experiments with hybrid forms and memoir, and she’s now at work on a collection about leaving.

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Heather White is one of the finalists for the 2021 Vallum Chapbook Award for her chapbook DES MONSTERAS.

DES MONSTERAS records the hopes and humiliations of arriving somewhere new. Composed by phone, torquing formal constraints into solace, its fifteen notes trace both an insular retreat and an impulse to connect during the Montreal winter of the pandemic. The chapbook is a poptimist’s account of moving and courtship that speaks to the thrill of beginnings, the threat of histories, the whims of grace, and the work of candour.

Vallum Chapbook Award 2021 Finalist: Sally Quon | Laid Waste

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Laid Waste, Sally Quon, Vallum Chapbook Award 2021

One More Mountain Sunrise

 

One more mountain sunrise,
golden light, clouds of
peach and lilac.

The forest calls –
I answer.
Road dust and moss,
pinecones and birdsong.

I was going to write a poem for you.

Instead, I chose
one more mountain sunrise.

 

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Sally Quon is a back-country blogger, dirt-road diva, and teller of tales.  Choosing to express herself through poetry, photography, and creative non-fiction, Sally has been published in all three. In 2020, she was a finalist in the Vallum Chapbook Award and The Muriel’s Journey Poetry Prize.  Her work has appeared in numerous anthologies including Voicing Suicide, Ekstasis Editions.  Sally is an associate member of the League of Canadian Poets.

 

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Sally Quon is one of the finalists for the 2021 Vallum Chapbook Award for her chapbook Laid Waste.

 

In Laid Waste, Sally Quon explores the myriad of emotions that come on the heels of physical abuse.  From trauma, anger, bitterness, loss and despair to learning how to let go and rediscover hope, these poems are a snapshot of that journey.

 

Vallum Chapbook Award 2021 Finalist: Emma Rhodes | Queer/Joy

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Chapbook Contest, Finalist, Queer/Joy, Vallum Chapbook Award 2021

Tapas

 

The first time I thought I was queer
was after kissing my best friend in 7th grade.

Or maybe
…………………….. it was when I ate an apple.
……………………………………… The curve of the core and
……………………………………… seed so hidden and
……………………………………… poisonous.

Maybe
…………………….. it was drinking tea
……………………………………… with another friend and playing chess.
……………………………………… The way their lips gripped the glass, the ambiguous
……………………………………… power of the queen. The wetness, maybe

…………………….. the heat of the tea.
……………………………………… That gentle warmth blanketing
……………………………………… my face from the harsh winter air or
……………………………………… fogging my sight. Maybe

…………………….. it was the nachos
……………………………………… when I dated men, the game nights,
……………………………………… the crunch, cuts on the roof of my mouth, trying
……………………………………… not to chew too loudly. Didn’t want

…………………………………………………………………….to be annoying, maybe
…………………………………………………………………….it was the muffins. The freedom
…………………………………………………………………….to throw whatever ingredient in and
…………………………………………………………………….be happy with the taste, still.

……………………………………………………………………………………… Maybe I was queer when
……………………………………………………………………………………… I stopped focusing
……………………………………………………………………………………… on who

……………………………………………………………………………………… what or how I consumed
……………………………………………………………………………………… maybe I was always

……………………………………………………………………………………… hungry

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Emma Rhodes is an award-winning queer writer and alumna of St. Thomas University. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in places such as Prism International, Riddle Fence, Qwerty, Plenitude, and elsewhere. In 2021 she was the recipient of the Robert Clayton Casto Poetry Prize. She is currently living on the unceded territory of the Anishinaabe, Haudenosaunee and the Huron-Wendatg people, where she will complete a Master of Arts in English Literature at Queen’s University.

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Emma Rhodes is one of the finalists for the 2021 Vallum Chapbook Award for her chapbook Queer/Joy.

Queer/Joy attempts to define a queerness inextricably attached to sexual trauma, female and queer friendships, body insecurity and more. While it does not arrive at a definition, the collection follows the author’s journey healing from a history of abuse and coming to accept her queer which is fluid and changing.

 

Vallum Chapbook Award 2021 Finalist: David Hargreaves | We’re All Gonna Die Someday

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David Hargreaves, Finalist, Vallum Chapbook Award 2021, We're All Gonna Die Someday

Postcard from the Ice Storm

— Independence, Oregon. January 2021

Dear N—
Gone to bed happy, one hundred percent
chance of a snow day, they say—

midnight—gun-shot reports
of tree-trunks cracked in two,

ice-glazed oak chandeliers shattering
on the rotunda floor. Utility poles

crushing cars, the arctic insurrection
cuts internet access, freezing assets

and truth conditions. I peer out
from under blankets,

crystal chards crunch
under militia boots marching

past on frozen lawns. Limb-punctured
roofs leak CO2. Winter’s back

is broken. The world is not well.
Anymore daffodil

have no business
in a poem.

We’re all gonna die someday
Yours truly,

.

.

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Living in Oregon, born in Detroit, David Hargreaves’ translation of The Blossoms of Sixty-Four Sunsets, poems by Nepal Bhasa poet Durga Lal Shrestha, was published in Kathmandu in 2014. His own poems appear in Comstock Review, Passages North, Naugatuck River Review, and elsewhere, including The Art of Angling: Poems about Fishing (Knopf). Running Out of Words for Afterwards (Broadstone Books), his first full-length collection, is due out in September 2021.

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David Hargreaves is one of the finalists for the 2021 Vallum Chapbook Award for her chapbook We’re All Gonna Die Someday.

Vallum Chapbook Award 2021 Finalist: Pamela Porter | Finding What He Can of his Own Way Home: Elegy of Patrick Lane

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Finalist, poem, Vallum Chapbook Award 2021

What is worn is what has lived

The wild rose was full with winter birds
settled on the risen snow. Chickadee,
nuthatch, junco.

And in another house, your dying
nearly complete. And the air thickening
with snow, but the birds remained.

How the heart closes a door so silently,
nothing disturbs the quiet.

And you stood up and entered a place.
One that had been prepared for you.
And the present fell away to the past.

Winter mornings you’d wake before dawn
and in that darkness, walked to the sea
where, in silence, in unison, the mute swans

took flight, the only sound in that moment
their wings pushing the air down and down
as they rose out of sight.

And after that, you knew anyone
could rise out of sight.

.
.

.

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Pamela Porter’s work has won more than a dozen provincial, national and international awards, including the Governor General’s Award for her young adult novel The Crazy Man, as well as the Pat Lowther, Raymond Souster, and the CBC/Canada Writes shortlists. Among her 14 published books, her most recent is Likely Stories, released in 2019 from Ronsdale Press. Pamela lives near Sidney, BC with her family and a menagerie of rescued horses, dogs, and cats.

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Pamela Porter is one of the finalists for the 2021 Vallum Chapbook Award for her chapbook Finding What He Can of his Own Way Home: Elegy of Patrick Lane.

The poems in Finding What He Can of his Own Way Home: Elegy of Patrick Lane are redolent with swans and wild rose, tree frogs singing into the night, echo both the poems of Patrick Lane and the poet herself, Pamela Porter, who lives with his spirit, as those who loved him do. The poet has “risen out of sight” but those who loved him feel his presence in their lives still. These poems rise also, with passion and compassion, written with love. And what does a loved one become, after death? the flame in the candle the moth at the window, the outline of a body in a chair in the early morning, an elegy, a set of poems that continue to live in the hearts of all readers.

— Blurb by Barbara Pelman

Vallum Chapbook Award Finalist: Maurya Kerr | tommy noun. “Orion”

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Chapbook Award Fanalist, Orion, tommy noun.

Orion

My boy came into the room and said, Mom, you are
the hound, Dad is the hunter, and I am the—

but he couldn’t remember, so stood there, silent. I wanted
to know, but forgot how to speak, form my lips into

language, started to say dear or hart or morn—even though
I knew that was wrong, knew I was messing up words, but

nothing more came out. In the second part of the dream he tried again:
Mom, you are the deer, Dad is the hounds, and I am the hunt—

but then stopped, shook his head, started over. No, you are the hunter,
Dad is the deer, and I am—he stopped again. No, you are

the hounds and the hunter, I am the deer. Then he walked outside
into the woods, the world. In the third part of the dream he was

standing in the yard, his back to the house. It was dark. Too cold
to be naked in the night—he needs a blanket. He was

looking up, still. In the last part of the dream he looked back as if
I had called his name, but I couldn’t have—I had forgotten how

to speak, form my lips into language. He pointed up and I saw him
say, Mom, see it? Orion! How I wanted to know, see it all, but I

couldn’t get past his body—when had he lost his baby fat? Where
was my little boy’s body? In the fifth part of the dream he

flexed and cocked his muscles, agleam beneath the stars and said,
Mom, look, the Hunter! And he laughed and laughed and cried

and wept, falling to his knees in the cold dirt of a dark night.

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Maurya Kerr is a bay area-based writer, educator, and artist. Maurya’s poetry has been nominated for a Pushcart prize, and has appeared or is forthcoming in Blue River Review, River Heron Review, Inverted Syntax, Oyster River Pages, Chestnut Review, Mason Jar Press Journal, Harbor Review, and “The Future of Black: A Black Comics and Afrofuturism Anthology” (November, 2021). Beginning fall of 2021, Maurya will be a UC Berkeley ARC (Arts Research Center) Poetry & the Senses Fellow.

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Maurya Kerr is one of the finalists for the 2021 Vallum Chapbook Award for her chapbook tommy  noun.

tommy   noun. employs known systems of construction—grammar, dictionary, myth—as anchor to speak to the death of someone too young. What happens when sorrow deluges the capacity, and rules, of comprehension? This collection attempts to write itself into meaning and grace, in the voices of the mourning and the mourned, both human and animal. To quote Lucille Clifton, “When I get to where I’m going / I want the death of my children explained to me.”

Vallum Chapbook Award 2021 Finalist: Nisha Patel | This is Not a Disorder, “A Disturbance… That Reflects a Dysfunction”

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chapbook, Fanalist, Nisha Patel, Vallum Chapbook Award 2021

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Vallum Chapbook Award 2021 Finalist Feature:

Nisha Patel, This is Not a Disorder

In Not a Disorder, the author interprets the clinical language of disability into poetics based on the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition. Contrasting her own identifying narrative with that of the medical text, the chapbook humanizes disability labels and takes us through the author’s journey of learning she is disabled.

Nisha Patel is an award-winning queer and disabled artist. She was the City of Edmonton’s 8th Poet Laureate, and the 2019 Canadian Individual Slam Champion. She currently works as the 2021 Regional Writer in Residence. She is a recipient of the Edmonton Artists’ Trust Fund Award and the University of Alberta Alumni Award of Excellence. Her debut collection COCONUT is available now at Glass Bookshop. You can find her at nishapatel.ca.

 

“Walking into August is East-End Toronto 2020” by Judy Tate Barlow, 1st Place Winner of Vallum’s Annual Poetry Award 2020

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1st Place, Annual Award, Judy Tate Barlow, Poetry Award, Walking into August in East-End Toronto 2020, Winner

Walking into August in East-End Toronto 2020

Is it how spruce don’t think, just do—arrange
their boughs for things withwings to dip andglide
on through? Or how the yellowcrane looms—strange

arabesque-sur-bleu, distraction-dance, wide
arcs boom-swung and slow—dwarfing all thatgrows

nearby? Stow yourthrone in a box on high

look down waydown to read what’s spelled below
soonfading from the sidewalk-page two words
spare chage—
consonance flown from the get-go.

Robins sequestering in spruce afford
a sortof feathered life and often thrive.
Is it city-clamour, or birdsong heard

(returning to my solitary hive)
calls me to sift the fallen notes, and write?

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J Tate Barlow lives uphill from a Great Lake, moves to the music, and loves the heft of a good pen. 2020 Vallum Award for Poetry – First Place. Poems in Vallum Contemporary Poetry, Grain Magazine, The Quarantine Review, The New Quarterly, The Dalhousie Review, Eastern Iowa Review, The Fieldstone Review.

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This poem was published in Vallum issue 18:1, Invisibility. Available to purchase through our website. 

The Vallum Award for Poetry 2021 is now open for submissions! Check out the entry requirements on our website and submit your work to be one of our next winners! 

“Border Crossings” by Mary Trafford, 2nd Place Winner for Vallum’s Annual Poetry Award 2020

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18:1, Vallum Award for Poetry

Border Crossings

 

Crossing the border used to be fun, sort of,
hide & seek, little white lies, us trying not to
laugh, Mum swatting us from the front seat,
crossing from rural Maine back to
rural New Brunswick, the Presque Isle River
barely a creek alongside the one-hut
customs office: it was all small-potatoes.

Mum once hid an entire dress
in her purse, the border guard asking,
Do you always carry a dress in your purse?
and she gave him that look we all knew,
that steady, firm gaze, said, Yes.
He backed up a step, as if chastened,
then waved us through.

Dad always declared his quota of liquor,
except for that one hidden in the trunk,
desperate to hustle those bottles across,
save the precious cents he so coveted
every day, all life long, insistent he
do all the talking, joshing the border guard
as if they were old friends, then waved
on through: satisfied, even smug.

Those were lighter days, no nine-eleven
to cloud our judgment, make almost anyone
suspect, not being white the crossover crime.
We did not yet know, being white, how
smuggling a dress, being black,
could cost so much,
how hiding liquor, being black,
could mean jail or worse.

We know now, as TV news flashes
its pornography of exclusion,
its ranking of humanity, placing
brown children in chain-link cages, their
mamá and papá God knows where,
residue of FOX News, bad politics,
of simply being brown in an alt-white world.

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Mary Trafford is a retired speech writer and medical illustrator, and longtime riding instructor. Her poetry has appeared in several publications, including Contemporary Verse 2, Arc – Canada’s National Poetry Magazine, Canadian Woman Studies, Corinthian Horse Sport magazine, Feminist Flavours, Gone Dogs – Tales of Dogs We’ve Loved, (muse)Letters, “Verdant,” a 2020 anthology from Truth Serum Press in Australia, and several charity-fundraising chapbook projects. A recipient of Arc Magazine’s inaugural Diana Brebner Prize, Mary lives with her partner in Chelsea, Quebec.

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This poem was published in Vallum issue 18:1, Invisibility. Available to purchase through our website. 

The Vallum Award for Poetry 2021 is now open for submissions! Check out the entry requirements on our website and submit your work to be one of our next winners!