The 2021 ruth weiss Foundation Grant Award Ceremony at WritersCon
Congratulations to the Winners and Finalists of the 2021 First Annual Maverick and Emerging Poet Awards, presented by the ruth weiss foundation. Founded with the aim to extend a helping hand to poets and artists, we are proud to award the winners of this year’s Maverick Poet and Emerging Poet Award to women, transgender, and non-binary artists who struggle to get their voices heard. These contests reward originality, with the potential to initiate whole new fields of endeavor, a way of viewing the world that has ripples of repercussions in the social, environmental, and moral spheres.
ruth weiss championed the beginning steps of poets throughout her life, watching up-and-coming writers evolve and develop their craft, and discovering the new voices of the next generation.
The Emerging Poet is one who has an insatiable desire to create, etching new works into a life-pattern of poetry. The judges have chosen poets whose unique works show promise for future innovation, and exemplify the originality ruth weiss carried with her at all times.
We received many outstanding submissions and would like to highlight two honorable mentions for this year’s Emerging Poet Award:
Bre Legan for their poem The Witch Who Grew Flowers from Her Hands
Sophia Bannister, for their poem The Honeymoon
There is one poet that blew us all away, a poem that our committee said was feverish, energetic, and integrated language that was blatant, amusing, and heartwrenching.
The winner of the 2021 Emerging Poet is ruth weiss foundation poetry grant is Katie O’Pray, for Both Gloves and will be gifted $1,000.
This year’s Maverick Poet Award goes to a poet that embodies the spirit of the maverick, questioning standard assumptions, standing apart from their creative cohort, and making the radical an everyday act. Maverick Poets are both an inspiration and a challenge to their peers, always on the edge of the next new thing, delving deeper into their art to seek out the revolutionary.
We received many incredible poems for the 2021 Maverick Poet Award from artists around the world and we would like to highlight the following two honorable mentions for their vision, purpose, and intent alongside their energetic imagery.
Lisa Rosenburg , for their poem Seven Sisters.
Abigail Carl-Klassen, for their poem The Quiet Part, Loud.
We are thrilled, in the spirit of ruth weiss, to reward this year’s Maverick Poet with a $2,000 grant, supporting them as they take chances and further their poetic vision. Our committee described this poem as rhythmical, radical, and reaching for something beyond the conventional. It exemplifies spatial and aesthetic resistance, out of the reach of typical understanding, and we’re very excited to see how this poet continues to create and shape their vision.
The winner of the 2021 Maverick Poet Award is Sur Ren Dirt for their poem “Untitled” that starts with the words we are performing.
Thank you so much to all the committee members for all their hard work reading and deciding our Maverick and Emerging poet Winners. Thank you to Writerscon for hosting our first annual awards ceremony. We look forward to collaborating with you in the years to come. We are grateful to our Outreach Coordination Victoria Robinson, the Beat Museum and all the organizations and universities who helped promote our foundation’s first annual grant. It was very important to ruth weiss to help other poets and artists. We are honored to be able to continue that dream and make it into reality.
Next year will be a new theme for the 2nd Annual Grant and will be open to all poetic artists to apply. We look forward to your applications for 2022’s grants!