I just got the news that the titular poem of my new poetry manuscript, “Where Language Ends,” has been named the winner of the 2025 Stephen A. DiBiase Poetry Prize.
Heartfelt thank you to the judges—Siobhan Kent, Matt Sharkey, Rus Sykes, & Habiba Dokubo-Asari—for selecting my poem from several hundred submissions. I am so honored to see my name alongside these other writers.
I’ve been in a season of brief and momentary breakthroughs, but like so many writers, mostly an almost insatiable flood of rejections, so I’m welcoming this acknowledgement of my work. It’s a poem I care a lot about, which makes this particularly meaningful.
I can never say it enough, but my unfathomably brilliant and generous friend (is not a big enough word), Adam Falkner, has offered the most vital and uncompromising feedback on all of these new poems. What a gift to have beloved friends who make me stretch to try, often in vain, to keep up with them. Without Adam, the new manuscript would not exist.
And, lastly, shoutout to Jon Sands and my Emotional Historians’ familia, with whom and during a generative workshop I drafted the initial version of this poem.
Onward.
#StephenADiBiasePoetryPrize
#WhereLanguageEnds
#EmotionalHistorians
#BackToTheWork
