Rattle is proud to announce the winner of the 2009 Rattle Poetry Prize:

Lynne Knight
Berkeley, CA
for
“To the Young Man Who Cried Out ‘What Were
You Thinking’ When I Backed into His Car”

Honorable Mentions:

Michelle Bitting, Pacific Palisades, CA – “Mammary”

Carolyn Creedon, Charlottesville, VA – “How to Be a Cowgirl in a Studio Apartment”

Mary-Lou Devine, Niantic, CT – “Crabs”

Douglas Goetsch, Edmond, OK – “Writer in Residence, Central State”

David Hernandez, Long Beach, CA – “Remember It Wrong”

John Paul O’Connor, Franklin, NY – “Beans”

Howard Price, Morro Bay, CA – “Crow-Magnon”

Patricia Smith, Howell, NJ – “Birthday”

Alison Townsend, Stoughton, WI – “The Only Surviving Recording of Virginia Woolf’s Voice”

Emily Kagan Trenchard, Brooklyn, NY – “This Is the Part of the Story I’d Rather Not Tell”

The eleven winning poems will be published in Rattle #32, which releases in December 2009. Another 19 poems were selected for standard publication, and offered a space in the open section of Rattle #33.

Thank you to everyone who participated in the competition, which would not have been a success without your diverse and inspiring poems.