Worcester County Poetry Association Announces Contest Winners

WORCESTER, MA—The Worcester County Poetry Association (WCPA) announced that Jeff Walt of San Diego, CA, has won First Place ($100) in this year’s WCPA Poetry Contest: The Frank O’Hara Prize for his poem “The World is Ending on the East Coast," according to Contest Chairperson Robert Gill. Gill, a member of the WCPA board, shared that the contest received 138 poems from 50 entrants. Contest judge Regie Gibson selected four poems.

Jeff Walt was born and raised in Clearfield, Pennsylvania, a rural community of railroad workers, bricklayers, and strip miners. His poems have appeared in a variety of journals including Poetry International, Los Angeles Review, Alligator Juniper, Americas Review, Harpur Palate, The Comstock Review, Inkwell, New Millennium Writings, Clackamas Literary Review, Bamboo Ridge, The Sun, Americas Review, Cream City Review, Connecticut Review, and in various anthologies. His chapbook, SOOT, was co-winner of the 2009 Keystone Chapbook Prize and published in 2010 by Seven Kitchens Press. His poem "After a Fight" was published as a broadside by Broadsided in August 2016.

Additional winners:

Second Place ($50) – Nicole DiCello of Worcester, MA for “Electra 101”
Third Place ($25) – Sam Capradae of Worcester, MA for “This Rage Dies with Me”
Honorable Mention – Michael Morlock of Berlin, MA for “Speak of the Moment”

The winning poems will be published in the next edition of The Worcester Review, the nationally recognized journal of the WCPA. The winners will read their work at the Winners' Ceremony and Reading this Fall where Regie Gibson will give a reading of his work and meet the poets. The contest, which was established in 1973, was renamed the Frank O'Hara Prize in 2009 and continues to be generously supported as a tribute to the late poet Frank O'Hara by his brother Phil and wife Pat O'Hara.

Photo via Shutterstock