We are excited to announce the winner and finalists of the 2021 1/2 K Prize, judged by Taylor Johnson. Thank you to everyone who submitted their work!

2021 1/2 K PRIZE WINNER

“Not forgetting, but choosing to.” by Sanam Sheriff

What Taylor Johnson had to say about this piece:

“One of poetry’s mediums is time— playing with it, being in and out of it, knowing its malleability. This poem I dig because the energy in it is trying to live outside of a marked sense of time, it moves through time sensually, has no borders in that feeling. The lines break in a measured, exacting way but somehow move loose in themselves, in the world the poem has planted in me. I am not convinced of anything by this poem, it doesn’t try to persuade, it offers and I dig that. And what it offers is a creation myth where the deity appears as a voyeur to the scene, coy and fleeting in their looking. I am open to the many variations upon the theme of “field” presented in the last line, as a space of labor, yes, but also its numinous and illumined iterations as a range of study, a desystematized known space.”

FINALISTS

“Aubade After Earth” by Ariana Benson

“The Hearing We Inherit” by Joshua Burton

“When I finally leave New York I am going to burn everything” by Jason B. Crawford

“Self Portrait as Ophelia Floating in the River” by Sadia Hassan

“Blued Moon, Crossing the Fence” by Richard Hamilton

“i can tell you” by Chantel Massey

“jamal dies and then” by Shakirah Peterson

“When mama wept” by Dāshaun Washington

“When people tell me that dancing hula makes you exotic” by Danielle P. Williams