I’m thrilled to announce I am a finalist for the Missouri Review’s 2021 Miller Audio Prize for my poem, “Woods.” The poem has been published on the Missouri Review’s podcast, “The Miller Aud-cast,” and you can listen to it by clicking on the box at right, or visiting the podcast page on SoundCloud.

I have been submitting to the Missouri Review since I was around twelve years old. Literally. So to be able to finally see my first publication in this absolute dream journal feels almost surreal. And to be a finalist in one of their contests—I really can’t articulate how honored and thrilled I am.

Some background on the poem

For every poem I write, sound and musicality are my foremost priorities. The same goes for every poem I read—I read it once to listen, and then if I like what I’ve heard, I read it again to understand. Nevertheless, I consider “Woods” unique in many ways from my other work, in the way that it creates meaning almost exclusively through sound, rather than words or sentences.

Perhaps for this reason, I’ve never been able to find a home for the poem in a print journal. This was always a little frustrating, since I’ve tended to get good responses to the poem when I read it out loud. It finally clicked for me one day that the Miller Audio Prize might just be the right place for it.

Thoughts from Missouri Review editors

Bailey Boyd, contest editor at the Missouri Review, and Marc McKee, TMR’s managing editor, gave such a generous introduction to the poem in their podcast. I can’t thank them enough for the time they spent listening to and getting to know this poem, and for their insightful comments. I thought I’d share a few here.

“What struck me was the energy that the poem creates through its rhythm and its rhyme throughout the entire poem. The poem becomes almost a self-sustaining or even a self-feeding engine.”

—Bailey Boyd, contest editor, Missouri Review

Bailey added that the poem feels that it has found its best form in an audio format.

“The sense of urgency and the relief, or the cognition of something painful and ongoing—I think it can be heard as both—at the end kind of snaps us into, and maybe out of, a spell. It really is like a spell for me.”

—Marc McKee, managing editor, Missouri Review

Many, many thanks to Bailey, Marc, and the entire Missouri Review team for believing in this poem, and for sharing it.