Featuring Distinguished Poets
Ilya Kaminsky and Katie Farris
Ilya Kaminsky was born in Odessa, former Soviet Union in 1977, and arrived to the United States in 1993. He is the author of Deaf Republic (Graywolf Press) and Dancing In Odessa (Tupelo Press). His work won several awards including The Los Angeles Times Book Award, The Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, The National Jewish Book Award, the Guggenheim Fellowship, and was also shortlisted for the National Book Award, National Book Critics Circle Award, Neustadt International Literature Prize, and T.S. Eliot Prize (UK). Deaf Republic was The New York Times’ Notable Book for 2019, and was also named Best Book of 2019 by several other publications. In 2019, Kaminsky was selected by BBC as “one of the 12 artists that changed the world.”
Katie Farris is a poet, writer of hybrid forms, and translator. Her poetry has been called “extraordinary” by both Paris Review and The Los Angeles Review of Books, while The Literary Review commented on the “immersive magic and unforgettable imagery” of Farris’s writing. Farris’s work has been commissioned by MoMA and appears in magazines including American Poetry Review, Granta, and McSweeneys. She also is the award-winning translator of several books of poetry from the French, Ukrainian, Chinese, and Russian, including Gossip and Metaphysics: Russian Modernist Poems and Prose. Farris also writes prose about cancer, the body, and its relationship to writing. She holds degrees from UC Berkeley and Brown University, and currently lives and teaches in Atlanta.
First Place
“An Ode to Rewritten Stories”
by Lia EberleinJunior, English major
Second Place
“One More Run, Down Edelweiss”
by Hannah ShabalaSenior, Communication Sciences and Disorders major
Third Place
“Pulchritudinous Homeland”
by Izaak BrysonFreshman, Global Cultures major
Honorable Mention “FM”
by Dominic FerarroSenior, Marketing major
“Cosmopolitan”
by Izaak BrysonFreshman, Global Cultures major
“Forget the Goodbye”
by Molly SebuniaSophomore, Health Science major
“The butterfly”
by Regan GanoeSophomore, Marketing major
I saw a scorpion in my bathroom roughly two and a half years ago, though it was not my bathroom, but one that housed my toothpaste and an array of blemish-fighting products. A temporary space–whose mirror I never quite got used to seeing my reflection in. I had finally left the shackles that trapped me in my hometown, one that has advocates who love it through the pits of its deepest potholes.
I stood there, frozen as if hit by a lake-effect snowstorm. It was then, that I knew I don’t belong here, no matter how much I hate the familiar roads and summer tourists when trying to get a chocolate & vanilla twist on a hot summer day. It was then, I knew, killing that scorpion would set me free of the delusion I put myself in.
I was born to live with chapped lips, to find myself in the place that I lost myself, even if for the rest of my life I plan on partially lying and saying I’m from “north of Pittsburgh” when asked where my hometown is. To smell of cheap vanilla perfume and wearing my father’s old crewneck he bought from an NFL game in the eighties. To be curled up in my temporary bedroom, flipping the fresh pages of a book I bought several months ago that I am just now getting to read–my own epilogue in this place slowly being written as I learn to dream realistically.
I can escape the smell of stale breath tainted with alcohol Trading it for fresh linens on a queen-sized bed, and I can reminisce About the first snowfalls that drown the last of autumn’s colors until the spring, where they dully emerge awaiting the rise of new life. This winter of mine is colder than those of my past. Even the ones I swore hypothermia would stop my heart. Yet, the seeds awaiting germination will be carried Far away, hopefully somewhere not infested by scorpions.
First sights on a ski trip, a proposal on a mountaintop, and a honeymoon in a blizzard.
First steps and then first ski boots. for children follow suit
Sunday mornings, each and early, under dawn’s light. A packed car and winding roads Lured by fresh air and powdery landscape
Flat inclines called bunny hills holding on and letting go Soon we seek trails marked with inky gems
Jumping and screaming and racing
The wind is our only competitor.
On passionate feet we descend freely and controlled. like the sweep of a fountain pen, white on white we stripe the slope with our signatures, but for only a minute.
At the end of the day,
When there are roses on our cheeks we retreat to the lodge.
O Tannenbaum
Deep, dark, heavy leathery, sweet, and smokey
*
The spiraling inlays
On the thick oak table
And it is there where I now sit. The news half holds my attention
And in the background the plague I hear singing, Happy Birthday to you
I pull on my heavy wool socks They were born in the United States and my boot’s beginnings in Austria and my mittens manufactured in China
I’ve seen the makings, but not the maker
Outside the tongue of snow licks
ski wax and epoxy backs
Spring is just warming Her throat It would be a nice day for a wedding Wouldn’t it?
The television reminds me… We see them rise With incandescent hearts
And motivations so humble
But He has stained his mind with the idea …of falling and so have the skiers and so have I, falling out of my old loves
Today is a birth and a wedding and a funeral
Which would you attend?
I have the world we made together, but I cannot see you in it.
We wrote this anthem a century ago But it was inapt on our Father’s lips Does it ring anymore true today?
Should I ski today, when the world is ending.
Seagulls at the beach
Crying and wailing for naught
Sirens in the air
I love the city but it wears on me Came home to the beach to set myself free
Offering them bread
In exchange for some silence
Make the peace I need
Writing quatrains while the train dashes by Dropping off one-time visitors who sigh
Clouds approach the sun
Challenge the authority
Of the summer light
This town is nothing more than a birthplace With stubborn storms that only locals face Rain comes crashing down I flee to the dry tool shed
Immersed and alone
Writing quatrains while the rain is falling
I hear the sound of my mother calling
Earthly cinema
Nature is a performance
Standing ovation
First Place
Second Place
“Ode to Icarus”
by Markus Curtis School of the ArtsRochester, NY
“Diptych for Grandmother, Rusting”
by Iris Cai The Harker SchoolPalo Alto, CA
Third Place
Honorable Mention
“Memories”
by Ashley Malkin
Greenwich High School
Greenwich, CT
“Hui Guo: A vignette”
by Heather QinRidge
High SchoolBasking Ridge, NJ
“Springtime Manifesto”
by Fiona LuHillsdale
High SchoolFoster City, CA
I like to think you laughed while you fell, your wings set in wax never made to weather the heat of your heart.
You were told the heights you flew towards would spell out your end. You, Icarus, decided the golden rays emanating from the sun called your name. The clouds beckoned, billowing above you. The wind gusted and you Flew higher and higher.
I like to think you started laughing the moment your feathers left you Flightless when you felt the wax dripping, your burning skin, nothing compared to the freedom of Flight
Not a chuckle or giggle but a roar reaching out and diving deep into the soul of the onlookers watching who would have felt scared for you?
But you, Icarus, I know you laughed as you fell. Oh Icarus, Oh Icarus they would’ve said.
i.
Chase God away with a rusted sickle. Instead, kneel to your motherland, & the soldiers you’re taught to worship. The soldiers who defiled her.
In 1949, my grandmother is too young to stow away on a fisherman’s boat. Besides, she has two older brothers. They seal her in a bush & pay a family to take her in.
Like any uprooted shoot, she grows into the secret daughter of the enemy. Learns never to speak of her birth, her tongue frozen as a boy in her class beats the teacher, hate splitting crimson flowers across his knuckles.
Crumpled on the ground, teacher looks exactly like her father floating inside a bullet-ridden boat that never made it to Taiwan.
Outside, the screams grow near. She kneels, alone, before the stones dotting the banks of the Yangtze, its bloodstream licking her armband rust-red.
ii.
I came to her on the midwinter solstice. My mother was birthed from storms so she named me after a flower.
Grandmother sits against the dusk from the fifteenth-story window. I am three & I know mother as the little girl in white framed on her bedside table.
Now, she smiles from the Nokia screen, telling me I am prettier now. Copper orchids half-wilt in her porcelain pot. I haven’t seen them since they bloomed last spring.
The day breaks pale coral & she must leave to take the train to the city for work. We say goodbye & mother flushes roselike. Falls silent. Says I am sorry I cannot give you more.
Mother’s English rolls off the rooftops like the thunder she’s named after.
Later, I mistake the full moon for milk candy that melts in our mouths like yearning.
from her tattered purse with shaking hands she slowly extracts a bundle of threads her life weave each strand, a moment to remember she carefully pulls a pale pink one, rubbing it between her fingers
do you want to hear a story, Lilly?
blood stings where I bite my lip - my sister Lilly died nearly a year ago but I slowly nod drenched in the sun’s warmth the sky clear as a mirror
I said yes before he even asked me to marry him he just slid the ring on my finger
the light in her eyes slowly fades as she begins stroking a coarse black thread sticking out from the rest resisting the urge to bury the words under the petunias
I gave your grandfather the envelope with the government seal he came home six months later his left leg still in that darned country
warmth returns to her eyes as she caresses a pale, yellow thread finally old enough to light the Shabbat candles, I slipped our heirloom glass candlesticks crashed to the ground, and we were both shattered all I saw was the broken beauty of Shabbat my tears reflected into a thousand tiny shards but my uncle scooped me into his strong arms
“nothing is ruined when family is together” she quiets, fingers moving and threads intertwining
I’m adding your visits to my life weave, Lilly
a week later, she cries in anguish - her life weave is missing frantically, I search for hours returning exhausted with only a promise to keep looking yet a sudden calm washes over her face
it’s okay Lilly, I have all the memories right here she touches her heart and then my face why couldn’t I have been Lilly?
she carefully takes my hand, stroking it like her life weave
I love you, Juliana overcome, at first I don’t notice the name she said was mine as I slowly exhale, she whispers everything will be okay, Juliana
I wove a lifetime, just hold on tight to it
Markella Nacopoulos
Northwest Pennsylvania Collegiate Academy
Erie, PA
Hawo Ibrahim
Northwest Pennsylvania Collegiate Academy
Erie, PA
First Place
Second Place
“A Virtual Instruction to Promote Knowledge and Acceptance of Telehealth in School-Based Practice”
by Megan CataneseOccupational Therapy Graduate program
“Knowledge and Confidence for Promoting Primitive Reflex Integration among Occupational Therapists”
by Erin Ludwig Occupational Therapy Doctoralprogram
Third Place
“The Strategies and Supports that School-Based Occupational Therapists Used to Help Their Students Succeed During the COVID-19 Pandemic”
by Lindsay Warner Occupational Therapy Doctoral programFirst Place
Second Place (tie)
“What’s Funny?”
by Edwin MurpheyJunior, Mathematics/Education major
“Literary Fiction as Medicine to Heal our Writing And Ourselves”
by Chelsea TotalSophomore, Biology/pre-Veterinary major
“Namelessness and Feminine Identity” by
Jillian WellsJunior, English major
Third Place
First Place
Second Place
“The Relationship Between Alcohol, H.I.V., and Abuse in Zimbabwe”
by Chenay Date LineSophomore, Industrial and Robotics Engineering
“Ecclesiastical Existentialism: Ancient Existentialism in the Bible”
by Luke BrattonSophomore, English and Philosophy major
“Oceanic Content in Children’s Literature”
by Erin PlatzFreshman, Environmental Science major
Third Place
“Toxicity in Young Adult Romance Novels”
by Leah MarkiewiczFreshman, Undeclared major
First Place
“Gannon community responds to suicide epidemic”
by Molly BegemanJunior,
Public Service and Global Affairs majorSecond Place “Ungrading; a movement for student-based learning”
by Jillian WellsJunior, English major
First Place
Second Place
Feature
First Place
Second Place
“‘Dahmer’ disrespects victims’ families”
by Ali SmithSenior, English/Secondary Education major
“Dr. Faustus Preview”
by Yvann EtievantNon-degree, visiting student from France
“Gannon installs gender neutral bathrooms”
by Ali SmithSenior, English/Secondary Education major
“Knight pays homage to the history of Erie’s hidden nautical gems”
by Molly BegemanJunior, Public Service and Global Affairs major\
First Place
Second Place
Sports
First Place
Second Place
Totem Art Award
“Body Image Perspective”
by Ali SmithSenior, English/Secondary Education major
“NCAA ACC Round Up”
by Tim SwickJunior, Digital Media major
“A Toss to the Top”
by Kira RiosSophomore, Marketing/Sport Management major
“NCAA ACC Round Up”
by Tim Swick
Junior, Digital Media major
“Deep”
by Lacey MamrosJunior, Biology/Healthcare Management major
David Swerdlow, Ph.D.
Gannon English Faculty
First and Second Round Judges:
Derek DiMatteo, Ph.D.
Douglas King, Ph.D.
Ann Bomberger, Ph.D.
Kaustav Mukherjee, Ph.D.
Berwyn Moore
Jennifer Popa, Ph.D.
Ann-Elizabeth Kons
Nicole Borro
Penelope Smith, Ph.D.
Matthew Darling, Ph.D.
Shreelina Ghosh, Ph.D. (Coordinator)
Final Round Judges:
Carol Hayes
Laura Rutland, Ph.D.
Douglas King, PhD (Coordinator)
Melissa Borgia-Askey, Ph.D.
Derek DiMatteo, Ph.D.
Shreelina Ghosh, Ph.D.
Carol Hayes
Varun Kasaraneni, Ph.D.
Ann-Elizabeth Kons
Kate MacPhedran, Ph.D.
Pegene Watts (Coordinator)
Bob Williams, Sample News Group
Kathleen Spinazzola, Sample News Group
Kaustav Mukherjee, Ph.D.
Sara Nesbitt
Dominic Prianti
Lisabeth Searing, Ph.D.
Kristen Snarski, Ph.D.
Mackenzie Starns
Elizabeth Starns, Ph.D.
Dr. Walter Iwanenko, Provost and Vice President for Student Experience
Dr. Lori Lindley, Dean of College of Humanities, Education, and Social Sciences
Niken Astari Carpenter - New American Liaison at the City of Erie
Larry Sapienza - Director, Refugee Social Services at Multicultural Community Resource Center, Erie
Gannon University Press
Gannon University Marketing
Sigma Tau Delta
Gannon Knight
Erie Times-News
