1st Annual Slate Roof Press Poetry Chapbook Contest Winner

Slate Roof Press is delighted to announce the selection of Anna M. Warrock's "From the Other Room" as the winner of our 1st Annual Poetry Chapbook Contest.

Anna M. Warrock is the author of two previous collections of poetry, Horizon (Great Owl Press) and Smoke and Stone (Stone Soup Poetry). Her work has appeared in many journals, as well as anthologized in Kiss Me Goodnight, Poems and Stories by Women Who Were Girls When Their Mothers Died, a Minnesota Book Award Finalist. Anna joins Slate Roof from Somerville, MA, to become our first member from eastern Massachusetts. The recipient of several literature fellowships and grants from the Somerville Arts Council, she has been an active voice in the poetry and cultural scene in the greater Boston area for many years. Her poems have been choreographed, set to music, and inscribed in the brick of a subway station, and her prose has been published by The New York Times and the San Francisco Chronicle.

What we admired most in Anna's work was her language and imagery, which were both lyrical and accessible; and her ability to capture the simple, genuine, and elusive human response in the face of loss and suffering. Here is one sample from her manuscript:

Snow

Please can you tell me, is it day or night?
--A Sudanese refugee resettled in Minnesota

It could be night, broken—as the clumps of snow
fall dark against the sky and could be pieces of the sky's body
come down, torn edges, someone tore them, some djinn or booligan,
the way the desert lions tore at the flesh of the boys running,
how many were left behind to bleach among the rocks
and in memory, things happening that have no name,
mother's arm hacked and exploded, and this snow,
pieces of sky changing as they fall into white
cold that coats all things, the way the night does
when you sleep through it with your eyes open and the roaring.

Slate Roof Press is member-run and committed to publishing local and regional poets. Designed by the poets themselves, Slate Roof chapbooks feature letterpress covers, special papers, and hand-sewn bindings. We invite you to learn about membership, small press publishing, and chapbook creation at slateroofpress.com.