University of Iowa National Social Work Poetry Contest: Spring 2024 Winning Poems
This year, as in previous years, The New Social Worker is pleased to celebrate National Poetry Month with the winning poems of the National Social Work Poetry Contest. The contest is sponsored by the University of Iowa School of Social Work “...to acknowledge the creative talent of social workers and to draw attention to social work as a profession.”
Congratulations to the Spring 2024 winners!
First Place
Home Lessons
by Carrie Gilman
University of Wisconsin – Madison graduate
The fellow flyin’ signs on the corner knows anything
can be a cancer. Fear, hate, violence, doubt, those words
circling the brain, a broken record, a dull needle.
What is a better descriptor of this darkness
than metastasis? Misunderstanding spreads,
multiplies, leaves countless without houses,
masses without a home, without belonging.
Anything can be a cancer. Numbing agents
travel the body. The side effect of not listening
is neuropathy. We have lost our touch, our sense
of each other, relying on the locked door for safety.
Cleave could be a better word, how what we attach
ourselves to, divides us -- divides what we’ve named country.
Oh, how our nation becomes its own traitor,
how we thought this body was ours to settle.
Second Place
Shinrin-yoku*
by Kristin Bartley Lenz
Wayne State University graduate
When hope feels like a hollow log, carved from rain and rot,
a cavernous tunnel, hiding horrors, I gather
star-shaped leaves and spiked spheres of sweetgum. I gather
sticky pinecones and softened apples. I gather
my breath drawn deep from my belly. I gather
my wits and my whimsy. And I stuff
that dark, damp cavity like a Thanksgiving turkey.
I leave it to bake in the murky forest, through sleet and snowfall
and critters scampering, scavenging, burrowing.
And when again I visit, 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 practice of “forest bathing” to promote physical and mental
well-being.
Third Place
Another Mass Shooting and I Write Another Poem
by Fara Tucker
Portland State University graduate
I reload lead in the chamber
of my mechanical pencil
and aim it at the page. Trying
to target this familiar funny feeling.
Hoping to discharge this foul brew
of fury and sorrow. To maybe light
a fire in callous and cold, dead
hearts. But the scope of the task
feels tragically out of range. My hand
cramps from gripping. Tears
erase early drafts and I wonder
how I'm any better than a politician.
For what is a poem,
but a bundle of thoughts
and a prayer.
Judges
Corinne Stanley, MA, MSW, is a poet, memoirist, translator, and collage artist. She has three collections of poetry, the most recent being Down into the Upward Golden (Dancing Girl Press, 2024). Her poems have appeared in Feminist Studies, the House of Zolo, Quartet Journal, and the San Diego Annual, as well as other literary journals. Stanley co-creates the blog Bilingualborderless.com with Marjha Paulino of Leon, Mexico. She currently resides in Iowa City.
Kara A. Carter, LMSW, PhD, is a 2022 University of Iowa graduate. Her dissertation is titled: “The lived experience of surviving a COVID-19 hospitalization for older adults in Iowa: An interpretive phenomenological analysis.”
Mercedes Bern-Klug, Professor, University of Iowa School of Social Work, is National Social Work Poetry Contest committee chair.
The University of Iowa School of Social Work hosts an annual poetry contest for social workers. Anyone who is a current student 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 close on January 31, 2025.
Complete rules can be found at: https://socialwork.uiowa.edu/resources/national-poetry-contest-social-workers