Previous Winners
Congratulations to Julia Rudlaff, whose poem "In May," was chosen by final judge Gabrielle Calvocoressi as the 2024 Annie Balocating Undergraduate Prize for Poetry winner.
About the winning poem, Gabrielle Calvocoressi writes:
"With its formal rigor and endlessly surprising imagery and detail, 'In May' takes the body’s relentless journey towards oblivion and makes a love poem, an elegy, a cartography of poetic possibility. I want to read more poems by this poet. A whole lifetime of them.”
Julia was awarded $500 and read the winning poem at An Evening with Laura Apol and 2024 Balocating Prize Announcement, held on April 3, 2024.
Finalists for the 2024 Balocating Prize for Undergraduate Poetry are Nura Al-Shamari, Abrielle Briske, Kalynna Davies, Lily Gabos, Khanyisile Nawa, Micah Prince, Julia Rudlaff, and Jeremiah Young-Walker.
In May,
When I see the skeleton
of a deer
or fox
decorating
the forest floor
I remember
how I used to
how I sometimes still
wish
that body
was mine
I hesitate —
calling it a
Body
what makes a
body
more than
bones?
Is it
blood,
meat,
a conscience?
who knows
I know,
it's been a long winter.
I see myself
emerge
becoming more
bone
than
blood
I remember
falling
decaying in february
refreezing in april
I wonder,
when the snow melts from my veins
if the rivers within me
will continue to run
or —
if i'll wake up
carved apart,
pelvis under piles of leaves
skull propped up on a tree
spine dangling,
turned into jewelry
for an artist's
neck
Julia Rudlaff
Winner, 2024 Balocating Prize for Undergraduate Poetry
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