Sweet has received some generous donations during the month of February, and we want to send a special shout out to those folks whose donations will help pay judges, website fees, and more. We remain fee-free for regular submissions, so our small operating budget comes primarily from donations, contest entries, and fundraising—which is difficult to do during the pandemic. Thank you for anything you can give to help us continue to support beautiful writing and foster literary community.
Thanks so much to all the wonderful poets who entered our contest this year! It was a very strong group, and both the editors and the judge remarked on how difficult it was to make final decisions.
WINNER:
KT Herr, “Improv”
KT Herr (she/her) is a queer poet, songwriter, and curious person with work published or forthcoming in Dream Pop, Small Orange, Frontier, Quarter After Eight, and others. KT earned her MFA in Poetry from Sarah Lawrence College, where she was the 2019-20 Thomas Lux Scholar and co-director of the 2020 Sarah Lawrence Poetry Festival. KT was awarded a 2019 Pabst Fellowship from the Atlantic Center for the Arts, and was a semifinalist in the 2020 92Y Discovery Poetry Contest. Her ghost ship is currently anchored in Oak Bluffs, MA, where she teaches poetry workshops and interns for Black Lawrence Press.
RUNNERS UP:
Amy Miller, “Meteor, April 2020” and “Baby”
Leila Sinclaire, “What I Mean”
FINALISTS:
Marcia Alrich, “The Dahlia”
Shevaun Brannigan, “The Men”
Rebekah Miron, “Bird Heart”
Dayna Patterson, “Pied Beauty Redux”
V.S. Ramstack, “a crow living with regret”
Sherre Vernon, “A Descriptive Linguistics of Isolation”
JUDGE: Paige Lewis is the author of Space Struck (Sarabande Books, 2019). Their poems have appeared in Poetry, American Poetry Review, Ploughshares, Best New Poets 2017, Gulf Coast, The Massachusetts Review, The Georgia Review, The Iowa Review, Poetry Northwest, Ninth Letter, and elsewhere. Paige currently lives and teaches in Indiana.
PROCESS: Poetry editors at Sweet Lit narrowed down the submissions to 10 finalist poems, which the judge received stripped of identifying information. The winning poem and some of the finalists will be published in Sweet Lit in the September 2020 and future issues.
Hi Sweet writers & readers,
Just wanted to let you know that we are open for submissions, and reading already-submitted work diligently, if often slowly. It is strange to live through such a world-changing experience as this pandemic, to be in the midst of it and know just how huge it is, to be observant and thoughtful and wonder just what sort of changes may come. At the same time as we’re surviving day-to-day, we’re inevitably seeing this thing as writers—following themes and phrases, trying to make sense of it all through words.
I know one question I have as a writer is just how tired editors may become of poems that refer to the pandemic, so I thought I’d address that issue as far as Sweet’s poetry submissions go: honestly, we’re still looking for the poems we like best, regardless of topic. If you’re sending us new work, it will inevitably be affected by the pandemic, no matter what it’s about. The dread, the uncertainty, the confinement—it will underlie poems even if you’re writing about your childhood. If you’re writing specifically about the pandemic, that’s ok too, as long as you’re turning it over/around/inside out, making art of it.
If it’s work that only makes sense if read within a short time of a specific news event, however, you’re better off finding one of the several current events poetry venues that are out there on the internet. Several have popped up specifically to deal with the art we cannot help but make about the COVID-19 pandemic.
We hope that some of the work you read in Sweet may sustain you during this bizarre and difficult time. We are grateful for the work you send in to us to consider, and glad there are so many fine writers out there.
–Katie Riegel, Editor & Poetry Editor
Hey Sweet readers–
We’re starting a new endeavor here at Sweet. Our goals are fairly modest: a new post every week by a Sweet editor or affiliate, on something interesting or exciting in the literary community. The first post will be up very soon!
–Katie Riegel, Poetry Editor
from Sweet contributor and kick-ass poet Maggie Smith. It’s called The Well Speaks of Its Own Poison and is the winner of the Tupelo Press Dorset Prize. Pre-order it here!
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