Winners of the 2020 Prime 53 Poem Summer Challenge!

In the spring of 2019, Press 53 poetry editor Christopher Forrest and publisher Kevin Morgan Watson invented a new poetry form, the Prime 53 poem, which has a total of 53 syllables: three stanzas of three lines each with a syllable count of 7/5/3 and a final two line stanza with a syllable count of 5/3, for a total of 53 syllables. The stanzas must adhere to a rhyme pattern of a/b/a; c/d/c; e/f/e; g/g. Beginning the first day of summer through the last day of summer, we challenge our readers to write a Prime 53 poem. This summer, Christopher Forrest, in a blind read, selected four poems from the more than 250 poems that were submitted for consideration. We thank everyone who participated in the fun and free contest.

And now, here are our winners (click to read the poem, or scroll down):

“Family Prime” by Bill Griffin of Elkin, NC

“Catch-22” by George T. Wilkerson of Raleigh, NC

“Cave Romance” by Kristin Chemis of San Diego, CA (Pushcart Prize nominee)

“One Red Maple” by Paul Jones of Chapel Hill, NC

~ ~ ~

Don’t look for him here; Bill Griffin is out in the woods somewhere counting stamens and trying to figure out how the hell you tell the difference between a sepal and a bract. Meanwhile, his poetry is being published here and there and his last chapbook was Riverstory : Treestory (2019, The Orchard Street Press). See his photos & essays at www.griffinpoetry.com

~ ~ ~

A reformed prisoner, George T. Wilkerson is an award-winning essayist, poet, and artist. His awards include a 2018 PEN Award; third place in the Cathy Smith Bowers poetry chapbook contest (2018), for which he declined publication of this truncated version in favor of the full-length manuscript, which went on to be named a finalist for the 2019 Press 53 Award for Poetry and a gold award in the Capitalizing On Justice art competition (2018). The National Magazine Awards selected one of his articles as a finalist for a 2019 Ellie Award. He contributes writing to The Marshall Project, The Upper Room, and is editor of Compassion. He is coauthor of Crimson Letters (March 2020, Black Rose Writing) and edited the anthology You’ll Be Smarter Than Us (Compassion, 2020).

~ ~ ~

Kristin Chemis lives in San Diego with her partner and twin boys, where she spends the best of her days cultivating the art of backyard existence. She has previously published the children's book The Parrots Next Door—a playful look at humanity's tendencies to mimic and follow—under the pen name K.K. Tucker.

~ ~ ~

Paul Jones — Poetry, Triggerfish Critical Review, Broadkill Review, 2River View and anthologies including Best American Erotic Poems (1800 - Present). Recently nominated for two Pushcart Prizes and two Best of the Web Awards. Chapbook, What the Welsh and Chinese Have in Common. Manuscript of poems crashed on the moon’s surface April 11, 2019.