The winner of the 2017 Lena-Miles Wever Todd Prize for Poetry is Amy Meng. The final judge, Jaswinder Bolina, selected Meng’s collection, Bridled, as the winner of this year’s contest.
Bridled will be published in spring 2018 by Pleiades Press. Jaswinder Bolina says of this book, “Bridled is poetry as slow-burn opera. You’re going to want to read this book for its every crisp and jarring image, its every ingenious line and phrase, and if that isn’t enough, this is a collection enriched by plot, conflict, and character development, all the page-turning stuff of high drama. The poems here offer, in reverse chronology, the story of a crumbling relationship between an unnamed speaker and her nameless ‘lover.’ In this telling, Bridled articulates a politics of self versus other, of body and gender, of loneliness and togetherness. It’s a collection you’re going to want to read from start to finish and then from finish to start.”
The finalists for this year’s contest were: Alison Adair, Dorothy Chan, David M. deLeon, Stevie Edwards, Nicholas Gulig, Mikko Harvey, Chris Huntington, Su Hwang, Julia Koets, and Felicia Zamora.