2021 Foothill Editors’ Prize Winner
Remi Recchia for “Morning Fables”
Praise for “Morning Fables”:
‘Morning Fables’ swings between humor and horror, sweetness and sorrow, light and dark, and the fantastical and the real, while also carrying the reader through multiple transformative spaces that ring with absence. The poem comes to a halt in the final line, as everyone in the scene stands “silent & sober & still,” and the reader also faces the same pain that continued to appear throughout the poem in renewed form. “Morning Fablees” is an exquisite poem with a skillful gradation of tone that animates to life the enormity of grief brought by reproductive challenges, all in just seven tercets.
–Emily Jungmin Yoon, Judge
2021 Foothill Editors’ Prize Finalists
Marisa Lainson for “Hyssop”
Rebekah Devine for “Self-Portrait as a Purple Cherub on the Tabernacle Curtain”
2020 Foothill Editors’ Prize Winner
Erika Luckert for “New Water”
Praise for “New Water”:
Erika Luckert’s poem “New Water” takes the reader on a voyage where the quotidian becomes fantastical and where the light and shadows of such a journey reveal themselves in poignant, near-tactile increments of great poise and great feeling.
–Rowan Ricardo Phillips, Judge
2020 Foothill Editors’ Prize Finalists
Chaim ben Avram for “an anti-creation myth”
Kaily Dorfman for “Criminal Activity”
2019 Foothill Editors’ Prize Winner
D.S. Waldman for “Encanto.”
Praise for “Encanto”:
“The pitch and torsion of ‘Encanto’ blesses what it curses, in a language beautifully poised between rapture and indifference. What’s between is a delicate resilience, that of the hummingbird, that of a small beauty, insisting on being there. ‘Encanto’ shows that though there’s despair in our world, there is also something ‘more affectionate than hate’ which remains. And we must find the rage to praise it.”
–Ishion Hutchinson, Judge
2019 Foothill Editors’ Prize Finalists
Bridget A. Lyons for “Sliding into Scutes”
Dani Putney for “My Mom Was a Picture Bride”
2018 Foothill Editors’ Prize Winner
Mia S. Willis for “hecatomb.”
Praise for “hecatomb.”:
“‘hecatomb.’ stands out among the editors’ excellent selections for many brilliances: its rangy allusions, its language and specificity, its devastating progressions, its carefully timed repetitions and variations, its insistent awareness of climate and culture. Reading this poem becomes an impressive, immersive experience, and it’s an experience I definitely want others to have. I’m in awe of so much of what the author accomplishes through this poem—I can’t wait to read more of their work.”
—Genevieve Kaplan, 2018 Judge
2018 Foothill Editors’ Prize Finalists
Reilly D. Cox for “Even as Rubble, My Brother”
Inez Tan for “I Am Trying to Care about You as a Person but You Keep Turning Me into a Bear”