This 12 months, as in earlier years, The New Social Employee is happy to rejoice Nationwide Poetry Month with the successful poems of the Nationwide Social Work Poetry Contest. The competition is sponsored by the College of Iowa Faculty of Social Work “…to acknowledge the inventive expertise of social staff and to attract consideration to social work as a occupation.”
Congratulations to the Spring 2024 winners!
First Place
House Classes
by Carrie Gilman
College of Wisconsin – Madison graduate
The man flyin’ indicators on the nook is aware of something
could be a most cancers. Concern, hate, violence, doubt, these phrases
circling the mind, a damaged report, a boring needle.
What’s a greater descriptor of this darkness
than metastasis? Misunderstanding spreads,
multiplies, leaves numerous with out homes,
plenty with out a house, with out belonging.
Something could be a most cancers. Numbing brokers
journey the physique. The facet impact of not listening
is neuropathy. We now have misplaced our contact, our sense
of one another, counting on the locked door for security.
Cleave might be a greater phrase, how what we connect
ourselves to, divides us — divides what we’ve named nation.
Oh, how our nation turns into its personal traitor,
how we thought this physique was ours to settle.
Second Place
Shinrin-yoku*
by Kristin Bartley Lenz
Wayne State College graduate
When hope appears like a hole log, carved from rain and decay,
a cavernous tunnel, hiding horrors, I collect
star-shaped leaves and spiked spheres of sweetgum. I collect
sticky pinecones and softened apples. I collect
my breath drawn deep from my stomach. I collect
my wits and my whimsy. And I stuff
that darkish, damp cavity like a Thanksgiving turkey.
I go away it to bake within the murky forest, by way of sleet and snowfall
and critters scampering, scavenging, burrowing.
And when once more I go to, I’m buoyed
by the smattering of fungi springing
from the decay, tiny white earlobes listening
to the questions rising
from my footsteps.
*Shinrin-yoku is the Japanese observe of “forest bathing” to advertise bodily and psychological
well-being.
Third Place
One other Mass Taking pictures and I Write One other Poem
by Fara Tucker
Portland State College graduate
I reload lead within the chamber
of my mechanical pencil
and goal it on the web page. Attempting
to focus on this acquainted humorous feeling.
Hoping to discharge this foul brew
of fury and sorrow. To possibly mild
a hearth in callous and chilly, lifeless
hearts. However the scope of the duty
feels tragically out of vary. My hand
cramps from gripping. Tears
erase early drafts and I ponder
how I am any higher than a politician.
For what’s a poem,
however a bundle of ideas
and a prayer.
Judges
Corinne Stanley, MA, MSW, is a poet, memoirist, translator, and collage artist. She has three collections of poetry, the latest being Down into the Upward Golden (Dancing Woman Press, 2024). Her poems have appeared in Feminist Research, the Home of Zolo, Quartet Journal, and the San Diego Annual, in addition to different literary journals. Stanley co-creates the weblog Bilingualborderless.com with Marjha Paulino of Leon, Mexico. She at the moment resides in Iowa Metropolis.
Kara A. Carter, LMSW, PhD, is a 2022 College of Iowa graduate. Her dissertation is titled: “The lived expertise of surviving a COVID-19 hospitalization for older adults in Iowa: An interpretive phenomenological evaluation.”
Mercedes Bern-Klug, Professor, College of Iowa Faculty of Social Work, is Nationwide Social Work Poetry Contest committee chair.
The College of Iowa Faculty of Social Work hosts an annual poetry contest for social staff. Anybody who’s a present scholar or a graduate of a U.S. CSWE-accredited social work program is eligible to enter. Submissions for the 2025 contest will open on November 1, 2024, and shut on January 31, 2025.
Full guidelines will be discovered at: https://socialwork.uiowa.edu/resources/national-poetry-contest-social-workers
