2015: Cathy Bryant
"Sexual Positions for Those No Longer Young"
If you submit a list poem like "Sexual Positions", the listed items should grow in absurdity and employ a variety of sounds, images, and feeling-tones. Bryant's poem met the all-important Winning Writers editors' test: Will we be quoting catchphrases from this poem across the breakfast table for years to come? "Darling, darling, let's try—Servicing the Caravan,/Polishing the Bevelled Edge, The Newt,/The Plumber's Lunch Break, The Mothy Woollen..." The title notwithstanding, this poem wasn't so much a joke about sexual decline in middle age, as a tender tribute to the private language that gets created in a long-term partnership.
2014: Simon Hendrie
"What Will You Say When Your Child Asks, 'Why Didn't You Invest in Eastern Poland?'"
Simon Hendrie had the largest return on capital in 2014 with his highly quotable poem. Starting with an unintentionally comical headline from a financial advertorial, the poem takes the scenario to a higher level of absurdity, with a dead-on parody of the thriller genre starring a sinister nine-year-old and his cowed papa. This poem was pitch-perfect, no longer than it needed to be, and on a topic we don't often see in this contest.
2013: Josh Lefkowitz
"Saturday Salutation"
Josh Lefkowitz pokes fun at the romantic conquests and near-misses of a Brooklyn hipster dude-bro. As the narrator gets carried away with his tribute to the girls he left behind, it's evident that he was only the center of the action in his own mind. This poem derives its humor from a well-realized persona, cleverly absurd metaphors, and the ironic contrast between the speaker's ego and his reality.
