The winning manuscript was chosen from nearly 200 manuscripts submitted. Each manuscript (first stripped of cover letters or any other identifiers, by a non-staff volunteer) screened by our volunteer editors, and the semi-finalists were then passed along to our final judge, Baron Wormser, former Poet Laureate of Maine, whose role as our final judge remained secret (not only to contest entrants but to the other SPP staffers as well!) Of our winning manuscript, Baron Wormser writes:

"In Along the Alaska Highway we find a poet whose touch is light but whose vision is profound. The poems emanate from the landscape with a beautiful clarity yet are suffused with the bittersweet tang of memory. Image after image resonates in ways that are impossible to paraphrase, that denominate true poetry."


A big thank you to each and every poet who entrusted is with their work and made our third annual competition a great success!