We created the Charles Simic Prize to honor our friend, teacher, and mentor after his death in early 2023.
This year we received 371 submissions from around the world. Our editors had the extremely challenging task of narrowing submissions down to 25 to pass along to Dana Levin, who selected the winner.
Here's what Dana had to say about the process and why she chose this year's winner:
I went on the hunt for a poem that carried some of the spirit of Charlie’s work: vivid images; a touch of the surreal; a conversational approach to diction and tone; a bit of dark humor, or irony, or the absurd—cut with a shiver of disturbance. Ultimately, I hoped for a jolt of surprise: a sudden flick of a switch in my work-a-day mind. The poem “Witness Statement” by Oz Hardwick has these qualities in spades. I followed the plot turns and the speaker’s confusions with real curiosity, and loved how the poem both surprised me and intensified its emotional stakes as it unfurled towards its end.
Thanks to the finalists for the tonic of vivid reading, and to Bill Schulz for the opportunity to encounter them. A bow to Tina Cane, Janine Certo, Holly Iglesias, and Erica Reid for submitting poems I read over and over.
Congratulations to Oz Hardwick, the recipient of this year's $1,000 prize and to Janine Certo, who received this year's Editor's Choice Prize, a signed first-edition of Charlie's Pulitzer Prize winning book, The World Doesn't End.
We're pleased to present the work of the 25 finalists in the following pages. Our thanks to all who participated in this year's contest.