The 2022 ruth weiss Foundation Grant Award Ceremony at WriterCon
Congratulations to the Winners and Finalists of the 2022 Second Annual Maverick and Emerging Poet Awards, and the very First Youth 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, Emerging Poet, and Youth Poet Award to all artists who struggle to get their voices heard. These contests reward those who’s words and lives reflect similar environmental and moral compasses as ruth weiss.
This year’s prompt was all about looking at nature in a new view with Mother Earth being the center. ruth weiss always wanted to help the planet and cared deeply about saving nature and animals. Discovering the new voices of change within the next generation will be a part of her legacy along with all of her activism and incredible work.
The Youth Poet Award inspires wisdom and freedom of speech from its origins in the modern Beat Generation. We received many outstanding submissions and would like to highlight two honorable mentions for this year’s Youth Poet Award:
Megumi Jindo for their poem As Our Mother Withers Away We Stand by Doing Nothing
Evan Wang for their poem God’s Eye
The winner of the 2022 ruth weiss Foundation inaugural poetry grant for the Youth Poetry Award is Elizabeth Shvartz for her poem untitled and gifted $1,000. Elizabeth used a unique structure of words, and we felt lost in the imagery as we read; the poem urges us to read it aloud—ourgrant committee sensed the tone about fatigue and anxiety of climate anxiety. With alluring and brazen language, the winning poem evokes discord with amusing twists.
Elizabeth Shvarts for their poem untitled beginning with the words “in the one the garden never”
The Emerging Poet Award is a category that includes an unquenchable desire to write, sketching new works into a life pattern of poetry. The judges selected poets whose distinctive poems show the courage of entirely authentic thinkers, feelers, and articulators. They illustrate the authenticity that ruth weiss carried with her at all times. We received many outstanding submissions and would like to highlight five honorable mentions for this year’s Emerging Poet Award:
Shams Alkamil for their poem SimpleMan
Fran Markover for their poem The Rubbing of Coco’s Sole
Emily Horwitz for their poem I would I were
Grace Yu for their poem Love Story
Yasmin Zainab Bergemann for their poem Window bird
The 2022 winner of the ruth weiss foundation’s poetry grant for Emerging Poet is Oakley Flanagan, for In other news. The grant committee judges loved this thoroughly unique, tense journey through processes that led to finding a ring lost in time and meaning. The purposeful agony of composting traversed new regions to the landscape of believable, comical human absurdity. In revealing magical perspectives from the natural world, this year’s Emerging Poet will receive a $2,000 grant, supporting them as they stake a claim in the literary arts.
Oakley Flanaganl for their In other news
We received many incredible poems for the 2022 Maverick Poet Award from artists worldwide. Maverick Poets navigates the valleys and mountains of our visual and emotional spheres, working on distinct rhythms and meanings. They began a journey that pushed them forward, making great strides in the poetic arts and literature. We want to highlight the following two honorable mentions for their vision, purpose, and intent alongside their energetic imagery.
Paul Brooke, for his poem Salvadora
Alex Gurtis for his poem Ode to A Coral Reef After Chihuly Seaforms in Macchia
Christine Larusso for her poem Ode to The House I Never Had
Kelly Grey for her poem Wolf (for Wendy)
Denise Letto for her poem That the Scar Becomes a Scar
Finally, we are thrilled, in the spirit of ruth weiss, to reward this year’s Maverick Poet with a $3,000 grant, supporting them as they take chances and further their poetic vision. Our committee described this poem as a symbolic, visual pattern like a quilted blanket grafting and sewing a beautifully created, emotional work given to reading aloud. The unique shape, repetitions, and flow ties together an inspirational story. The 2022 Maverick Poet Award winner is Sharon Coleman for her poem Was it for this?
Sharon Coleman, for their poem, Was it For This
Thank you so much to all the committee members for all their hard work reading and deciding our Maverick, Emerging and Youth Poet Winners. Thank you to Writercon for hosting our second annual awards ceremony. We look forward to collaborating with you in the years to come. We are grateful to our Administrative Coordination team members, the San Francisco Beat Museum staff, and all the organizations and universities who helped promote our Foundation’s second annual grant. It was essential to ruth weiss to support 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 third Annual Grant. We look forward to your applications for 2023’s grants!