Nostrovia! Press
  • Home
  • Nostrovia! Press archive
    • Former N!P Home Page >
      • Bartenders
      • How do we distribute?
    • Poetry Contest >
      • 2020 Winners
    • Chapbooks >
      • Full Catalog >
        • 2018 Chapbooks
        • 2017 Chapbooks >
          • Loathe/Love/Lathe by Aeon Ginsberg
          • our own soft by Katie Clark
          • every time i park my car I feel like i'm doing something wrong by Joseph Parker Okay
        • 2016 Chapbooks >
          • I Was Talking About Love—You Are Talking About Geography by Bob Sykora
          • Make a Fist & Tongue the Knuckles by Emily O'Neill
          • I Can Remember the Meaning of Every Tarot Card But I Can’t Remember What I Texted You Last Night by Elle Nash
        • 2015 Chapbooks >
          • Moon Facts by Bob Schofield
          • Juliet II by Sarah Xerta
          • Bird Lizard Horse by August Smith
    • F/A/L/D >
      • Current Issue
      • Archives >
        • Issue #014
        • Issue #013
        • Issue #012
        • Issue #011
        • Issue #010
        • Issue #009
        • Issue #008
        • Issue #007
        • Issue #006
        • Issue #005
        • Issue #004
        • Issue #003
        • Issue #002
        • Issue #001
    • Traveling Bookstore
  • Home
  • Nostrovia! Press archive
    • Former N!P Home Page >
      • Bartenders
      • How do we distribute?
    • Poetry Contest >
      • 2020 Winners
    • Chapbooks >
      • Full Catalog >
        • 2018 Chapbooks
        • 2017 Chapbooks >
          • Loathe/Love/Lathe by Aeon Ginsberg
          • our own soft by Katie Clark
          • every time i park my car I feel like i'm doing something wrong by Joseph Parker Okay
        • 2016 Chapbooks >
          • I Was Talking About Love—You Are Talking About Geography by Bob Sykora
          • Make a Fist & Tongue the Knuckles by Emily O'Neill
          • I Can Remember the Meaning of Every Tarot Card But I Can’t Remember What I Texted You Last Night by Elle Nash
        • 2015 Chapbooks >
          • Moon Facts by Bob Schofield
          • Juliet II by Sarah Xerta
          • Bird Lizard Horse by August Smith
    • F/A/L/D >
      • Current Issue
      • Archives >
        • Issue #014
        • Issue #013
        • Issue #012
        • Issue #011
        • Issue #010
        • Issue #009
        • Issue #008
        • Issue #007
        • Issue #006
        • Issue #005
        • Issue #004
        • Issue #003
        • Issue #002
        • Issue #001
    • Traveling Bookstore
Nostrovia! Press

2020 Poetry
Contest!!

much respect for OUR THREE WINNERS: 
  • JAI HAMID BASHIR   
  • CHRISTINA IM     
  • Sneha Subramanian Kanta    
AND MUCH LOVE fOr OUR THREE JUDGES:
  • LYD HAVENS
  • STEPHEN FURLONG
  • LAURA VILLAREAL
193 poets furnished May with +500 poems for our editors to review, with 21 finalists passed along to our three judges: Lyd Havens, Laura Villareal, and Stephen Furlong. Below are the three poetry contest winners selected by our judges and our N!P honorable mentions. ​

2020 Contest Winners

CHRISTINA IM 
Praise from judge, Stephen Furlong:

Christina Im’s “thank thank” is one of those poems, after reading and re-reading, I want to stay in my bloodstream. I also want to hang it on the walls of my office, at the bus stop, in libraries and classrooms, everywhere. The poem has musicality and faith of a chorus, dripping imagery, and a tangible hopefulness. About halfway through my second read, the poem secured its place as my selection after being moved to tears once again when I read: …all the million ways to die still/losing to the single way to not. Can I get an amen?

"thank thank"
after Ross Gay & Yusef Komunyakaa

         ​& can I get a big shoutout for this body, feverless, emptying another bomb
of its beauty, no it hasn’t failed me yet, can I get a shout for how obvious
         this sun is over the leaves, gold gauze I’ll never bleed through, a hell yeah
for the breeze carving me braver out of myself, oh wow, & now
         I know my face a little better, can I get some love for this playlist, forty-five hours
straight from the motherland, & the car the other car the streak-of-dirty-light car
         that doesn’t hit me as I half-run the crosswalk, all the million ways to die still
losing to the single way to not, another round of applause for gravity,
         sugaring over my bones, can I get a shout or two for the blue above me
whispered free of rain, the cold sitting down inside me so honest & un-
         exploded, all these people passing by who see me & start to think
absolutely nothing, crowns for all of them please, today is a day
         we don’t have to deserve our good things, sweet things, things that crack
just loud enough to let us know we’re alive, can I get some fanfare, real
         spun-honey shit, for this soreness in my legs, I always wanted to be someone
who could admit when she was wrong, & god I was wrong
         when I said I could make it all the way out here alone, can I get a shout
for the call home, my voice still falling down the line, and I’ll do it, I’ll ask
         for a kiss for the girl I love, or maybe a firm handshake, just to save
for when I meet her, & can I get a blessing for this poem that keeps
         forgiving me for my breath, hey hey, a little love too for my tears, dried
in places only I know, a shout for all the women in my family
         who woke up devastated, & for this heart they gave me pumped full
of decent air, can I get a few beats out of it now, o-kay, o-kay,
         they always did tell me I was made for something, tiny & better & here.

Picture
Christina Im (she / her) is a Korean American writer and undergraduate at Princeton University. A 2018 finalist for Best of the Net, she has been recognized for her work by Bennington College, Hollins University, the National YoungArts Foundation, and the U.S. Presidential Scholars Program. Her poetry has appeared in Strange Horizons, The Adroit Journal, and The Margins, among others. In addition, her poem "Meanwhile in America" was selected by Natalie Diaz for inclusion in Best New Poets 2017.

​JAI HAMID BASHIR 
Praise from judge, Lyd Havens:
​
Every line of Jai Hamid Bashir’s “Besides the Fear of Darkness” sings, hums, breathes. This poem recognizes the violence and goodness people simultaneously carry within them, with searing observations like “Born with a knife / to hold in your hand, yet spiraled rinds of sweet oranges // rest in the moons of your fingernails” and “You have seen some death, // exhumed it first in the smallest bones”. Bashir is attentive and searing, and reminds the audience that what happens to us does not have to become us. “Besides the Fear of Darkness” is compassionate, present, and as alive as any of us.
"Besides the Fear of Darkness"

Gloved in morning light, a finger-deep day
             prowls in the sun-glut of a March window. Laying itself

so bare in the wing of morning, know that every day
             is my arrival at your door. The lipped-halo of radiance

from my headlight is the first sign. All this devotion
             for your chlorophyll, so green is the color of life. I’ve come

to you with a lairt so you can keep me. Born with a knife
             to hold in your hand, yet spiraled rinds of sweet oranges

rest in the moons of your fingernails. Before seven,
             with a homemade sling, you killed a sparrow. Death rang

like a sharp closing of the backdoor that echoed
             in terrible lassoing-wind on a grassland of night.

You told me about it with wet eyes looking as hungry
             as a newly discovered road dog. You have seen some death,

exhumed it first in the smallest bones. I’m here and I will
             arrive like a hound following you through the pines

like a united phantom on the brink of your wonder. Where else
             and how do we satisfy hunger? In labrusca purple stains

painted on the hooves of your mouth, I am the indulgent soot
             of your flesh—let’s just call it fires and fires everywhere.

​We will then guess about the animals our bodies are becoming.

Picture
Born to Pakistani-American immigrant artists, Jai Hamid Bashir (she/her) was raised in the American West. Jai has been published and has work forthcoming from The American Poetry Review, The American Literary Review, The Cortland Review, Small Orange Press, and others. An MFA student at Columbia University in the City of New York, she writes between Salt Lake City, Washington Heights, and Lahore.

SNEHA SUBRAMANIAN KANTA 
Praise from judge, Laura Villareal:

I found both delight and comfort in Sneha Subramanian Kanta’s poem “Faith.” The poem’s meditation on faith amazed me with every turn. I resonated most with what she says in these lines, “When I say God, I flounder / because each morsel of rice // is God to the hungry.” It was such a simple reminder of gratitude.
 
I also love the measured delicacy of the images inside each stanza; they build worlds that remind me of tide pools. I keep thinking of the lines, “I sit by the lotus-lake, eat God, // & count water-petals over waxy / petals. Again I unpeel // the black sky & trace the teal mountains.” There's something new to admire with every read of this poem. 
"Faith"
after Arun Kolatkar

Not in the womb. Or the heart.
It begins in the eyes

& stays there. Two tadpoles
jump on a clover shaped leaf.

I say—Tuka, every night,
I sit by the lotus-lake, eat God,

& count water-pearls over waxy
petals. Again, I unpeel

the black sky & trace teal mountains.
Tuka, when you say beloved

you refer to everyone.
The difference between us & God

is there is no doorway between
us and God. Among ourselves,

we erect many frames. Tuka, when
I look for God in the dark

there is no fear of ringing the wrong
doorbell. No necessity of gyarah annas.

Fireflies mutter around a light bulb
& the night comprises

of two languages. The life-giver
& eternal life. Tuka, the sparrows

have gone to sleep inside their
nests in the baragad in full bloom.

Tuka, a kernel thrives.
Light peers through the dark room.

When I say God, I flounder
because a morsel of rice

is God to the hungry. Rain is
God to the dry mouth of earth.

​Tuka, even the sky bleeds vermillion
to birth a new sun each day.

Picture
Sneha Subramanian Kanta is a writer from Canada. She has been awarded the first Vijay Nambisan Fellowship 2019. She is a recipient of The Charles Wallace Fellowship (2018-19) at The University of Stirling. An awardee of the GREAT scholarship, she has earned a second postgraduate degree in literature from The University of Plymouth. She is the founding editor of Parentheses Journal and reader for Tinderbox Poetry Journal. Her chapbook titled Ghost Tracks is forthcoming with Louisiana Literature Press (Southeastern Louisiana University).

2020 CONTEST honorable mentions

Shout-out to the following amazing writers:
  • Sierra Rose Lindsay 
  • Samuel J Fox
  • Hattie Jean Hayes
  • Zooey Ghostly
  • Dez Levier 
  • Gustavo Barahona-López
  • Lip Manegio
  • Lannie Stabile
  • Tamsin Blaxter 
  • gigi bella 
  • Kanika Lawton 
  • Carla Sofia Ferreira
  • Tyler Friend
  • Michael Welch
  • J. MacBain-Stephens
  • Zain Ul Abidin Khan Alizai
  • Cassandra de Alba 
  • Zachary Bond

Dig our chapbook contest:

nostrovia chapbooks