congratulations to e.d. watson for winning the 2023 cow creek prize with her chapbook, via dolorosa and advent wreath​

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Here's what this year's judge, Chad Abushanab, had to say about E.D.'s chapbook: 

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On the subject of political poems, Carl Dennis writes that the best of them “present speakers who try to be honest about the limits of their positions, who recognize that the best political choices are not ideal… that the good they bring is often accompanied by some harm.” He calls for a political poetry that doesn’t begin with an agenda, but rather shows a speaker coming to hard-won truths, often at the expense of their own comfort. 

 

E.D. Watson’s “Via Dolorosa” and “Advent Wreath” fit nicely into this paradigm and take full advantage of what such an approach offers its readers. Initially driven by a desire to re-awaken a sense of faith, the speaker arrives in Jerusalem hoping the Holy Land will spark within them, again, the belief in a higher power. What unfolds instead is a journey that moves away from the self as the speaker comes face to face with the systematic oppression of the Palestinian people. 

 

While most contemporary poetry turns increasingly inward, we find here a refreshing desire to accept oneself as largely insignificant in the greater drama of existence — to instead become a conduit for revelations bigger than the personal. “The only way back is inwards,” the speaker tells us at the close “Advent Wreath,” which implies the way forward must be outward. This outward motion is one of the defining achievements of Watson’s book. In these poems, truth comes from dissolving oneself in the violence of history and attempting the impossible task of reconstituting on the other side. 

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Preorder your copy on December 1!