Previous Winners
2022 Balocating Prize Winner
Congratulations to Sophia DeRango, whose poem "When My Dad Called the Cops on My First Boyfriend" was chosen by final judge Jonah Mixon-Webster as the 2022 Annie Balocating Undergraduate Prize for Poetry winner.
About the winning poem, Jonah Mixon-Webster writes:
In the poem "When My Dad Called the Cops on My First Boyfriend," imagery and intonation are deployed as simultaneous modes of avowal and implication. The gaze of the poem and its speaker oscillate away and toward the events of violence and silence, performing a widespread indictment in which every figure and object becomes complicit, especially the figure of the "cop." This poem's most magnanimous quality is its precise lyrical pacing, the steady rhythms of apprehension and interrogation which reify and confound the temporal realities of survival. Considering this year's theme for the Balocating Contest, "Poetry of Witness, Poetry of Resistance," I am grateful for how this poem asks us to witness and appreciate a survivor's complete milieu beyond the instantiations of trauma, injury, and fear. Furthermore, I am grateful for how this poem encourages us to understand that resistance has no time table, there is no deadline for resistance, it has no expiration date--that despite whatever amount of time it takes, resistance is to be celebrated and supported whenever it happens.
Sophia was awarded $500 and read the winning poem at Poetry of Witness, Poetry of Resistance: JJJJJerome Ellis, Layli Long Soldier, Jonah Mixon-Webster on April 6, 2022.
Finalists for the 2022 Balocating Prize for Undergraduate Poetry are Alissa Hakim, Natalie Mannino, Anel Robinson, Julia Rudlaff, Durga Shanker, Jo Troxell.
When My Dad Called the Cops on My First Boyfriend
Large leaf portrait
small cat purring
on the piano
that only I know how to play
moss green couch
warm from the afternoon sun
When I sit down
in our living room
curated so carefully
by my mother
pillows billow dust
A police officer
questions me
What is his name?
When did this happen?
Where does he live?
Can you describe
exactly where
you were at the time?
The dust resettles
I overhear him
asking my dad
Why did she wait so long
to tell someone?
My final text
that warns him
to never contact me again
changes from delivered
to read
My mom lowers
the shades
Sophia DeRango
Winner, 2022 Balocating Prize for Undergraduate Poetry
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