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The 2024 Barbara Mandigo Kelly Peace Poetry Awards
Poetry, a medium that transcends mere facts, has the power to immerse us in profound experiences. The Barbara Mandigo Kelly Peace Poetry Awards, an annual celebration of poetic excellence, invites poets from around the world to embark on this enriching journey. We are pleased to announce the winners of our 2024 Poetry Contest. These poets have skillfully woven words to craft verses that not only resonate with the essence of peace but also inspire us to reflect upon the beauty of the human spirit.
First Place, Adult Category:
- Devreaux Baker for “Escape Into The Unknown”
Honorable Mention, Adult Category:
- Lynne Schilling for “Prayers I Wished I’d Uttered When Forced to Pray Aloud in Fifth Grade”
First Place, Ages 13-18 Category:
- Vivian Zhuy for “Songbird”
Honorable Mention, Ages 13-18 Category:
- Ela Kini for “Feminine intersections”
First Place, Ages 12 and Under Category:
- Cadence Puamelia Christensen for “The Eagle”
Congratulations to all of our winners! We want to extend our gratitude to all the poets who participated in the 2024 Poetry Contest—your creativity and dedication to promoting peace through poetry are truly inspiring. We are also deeply appreciative of our Poetry Contest Selection Committee, led skillfully and with passion and care, by the NAPF Board Member Perie Longo, and consisting of Laure-Anne Bosselaar, Christine Kravetz, David Starkey, and Chryss Yost, as well as our staff member Carol Warner, without whom the contest would not be possible. You can read the winning poems below.
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First Place – Adult Category
Escape Into The Unknown
By Devreaux Baker
In the war tunnel you sit with your back pressing out
a landscape of fear into brick and mortar.
Just outside light is wavering on the horizon
unsure if it is safe to flood this terrain.
Two dogs slowly cross the idea of what once was
a street and walk across a field of broken buildings
headed someplace else. They have joined the tribe
of those escaping to the unknown where
there are no longer beds or chairs, refrigerators
or running water. You hold onto a kitchen in your mind;
smooth stone floors, cabinets your grandfather
built with bare hands, leveling the wood, smoothing
and shaving, humming a song that embedded notes
into the shape of drawers and doors, countertops
and hinges. You carry his song tucked into the
cabinet in the corner of the kitchen you have saved
inside your mind. In the evening, blue light drifts
through this room and you whisper the word
twilight, that comes and goes now as a moment
held inside you along with the small sounds
of women preparing an evening meal. You hear
their laughter that rises and falls in this place
you are holding onto. There is the smell of rosemary
and sumac, ginger and bay laurel. You sit in the war tunnel
escaping the broken dream of your life by conjuring
the kitchen of your grandmother’s house, mouthing words
of hope, creating a landscape of the known world
to carry with you on your escape into the unknown.[/fusion_text][fusion_text columns=”” column_min_width=”” column_spacing=”” rule_style=”” rule_size=”” rule_color=”” hue=”” saturation=”” lightness=”” alpha=”” user_select=”” content_alignment_medium=”” content_alignment_small=”” content_alignment=”” hide_on_mobile=”small-visibility,medium-visibility,large-visibility” sticky_display=”normal,sticky” class=”” id=”” margin_top=”” margin_right=”” margin_bottom=”” margin_left=”” fusion_font_family_text_font=”” fusion_font_variant_text_font=”” font_size=”” line_height=”” letter_spacing=”” text_transform=”” text_color=”” animation_type=”” animation_direction=”left” animation_color=”” animation_speed=”0.3″ animation_delay=”0″ animation_offset=”” logics=””]
Honorable Mention – Adult Category
Prayers I Wished I’d Uttered When Forced to Pray Aloud in Fifth Grade
By Lynne Schilling
Dear God,
Thank you for Koala Bears.
Amen
Why do some people
not have enough to eat?
Amen
Help us take care
of Mother Earth.
Amen
Why do you allow
war and tornadoes?
I need to know.
Amen
Thank you
for the smell
of snowy mittens
drying on radiators.
Amen
Please stop
teachers from making
Dickie Lenger,
a stutterer, recite
Bible verses.
Can’t you see
how it hurts him?
Amen
I don’t think you
would like
what’s happening down here.
Amen[/fusion_text][fusion_text columns=”” column_min_width=”” column_spacing=”” rule_style=”” rule_size=”” rule_color=”” hue=”” saturation=”” lightness=”” alpha=”” user_select=”” content_alignment_medium=”” content_alignment_small=”” content_alignment=”” hide_on_mobile=”small-visibility,medium-visibility,large-visibility” sticky_display=”normal,sticky” class=”” id=”” margin_top=”” margin_right=”” margin_bottom=”” margin_left=”” fusion_font_family_text_font=”” fusion_font_variant_text_font=”” font_size=”” line_height=”” letter_spacing=”” text_transform=”” text_color=”” animation_type=”” animation_direction=”left” animation_color=”” animation_speed=”0.3″ animation_delay=”0″ animation_offset=”” logics=””]
First Place – Age 13-18 Category
Songbird
By Vivian Zhu
Grandmother pressed a prayer
into your open palms, an offering in the form
of air. You tell me this story on a pool deck,
our years close enough to touch. There are
no world records for survival, you say, your eyes
haunted by distance & open water, reliving
your swim to the mainland. Grandfather taught you
how to stay afloat & slit a throat. Hands slick
with carmine feathers. His hands full of birdseed, twining
a rope to liberty around your neck, tight enough
to choke. Seas away from home, there are still bullets
& you are still bleeding. Every flight path
lit aflame. The day you ran, the sky was the color of blue raspberry
sorbet shot through with strawberry sauce. Back then,
you still thought of the world in terms of sweet things.
Back then, the rice paddies were bloodless & your smile
was soft as down. I wish you didn’t see everything soft
as bruised, bent for blows, but all you can remember
is that you brought your daughter to a land
where her body isn’t her own. Another battle
fought in water. Our wombs another word
for war. Your fingers prune in the pool,
nostrils wrinkled by chlorine. The water is warm
enough to warrant our bodies’ proximity, your softness
the closest thing to surrender. I wait, in flight,
with my eyes open.[/fusion_text][fusion_text columns=”” column_min_width=”” column_spacing=”” rule_style=”” rule_size=”” rule_color=”” hue=”” saturation=”” lightness=”” alpha=”” user_select=”” content_alignment_medium=”” content_alignment_small=”” content_alignment=”” hide_on_mobile=”small-visibility,medium-visibility,large-visibility” sticky_display=”normal,sticky” class=”” id=”” margin_top=”” margin_right=”” margin_bottom=”” margin_left=”” fusion_font_family_text_font=”” fusion_font_variant_text_font=”” font_size=”” line_height=”” letter_spacing=”” text_transform=”” text_color=”” animation_type=”” animation_direction=”left” animation_color=”” animation_speed=”0.3″ animation_delay=”0″ animation_offset=”” logics=””]
Honorable Mention – Age 13-18 Category
Feminine intersections
By Ela Kini
my mother tells me about the village how she knew it, how the brahmins lived by the muslims lived by
the bunts. they were divided by all things, their caste and their color and their gods, the weight
between them heavy, it would have been easy to unravel their peace, so they drew together in the
presence of their shared violence. after all, these women were small, hungry, so the girls in their hijabs
and the girls in their bareness—hair down, matted around their shoulders like a feminine darkness—would run together trowards the mangoes that were strewn on the pavement, the mangoes left half-eaten by the crows, the mangoes that spilled their flesh over the girls’ fine clothes, little shared stains like their skin.
they together grew dark in summer and worthy in cooler fall. they left their homes only after dark but
there was no crime but their theft of the half-eaten things. there was no crime but the muslim mother’s
lost daughter, left behind in partition. there was no crime but her hand that could not hold so tightly.
remember these women were small, loss-stickied, hungry. the muslim mother would not prepare food
on the reminder of that day. she, pilgrim, would wander back to the place where she lost the laugh of
her toddler. the minutes stretched heavy as she stood on the worn-down train tracks. these women
were small. the mother cried so softly. and the little muslim girls would go to the hindu house, would
eat in the silence that comes only from the violence of their mutual origins, and all would pray.
it was a women’s sermon. shaped like a gape in the flesh, a sermon of shrunken girl bodies.
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First Place – Age 12 and Under Category
The Eagle
By Cadence Puamelia Christensen
Out-stretched hands reaching for compromise.
Leaders valuing diplomacy and respect.
Inspirational ideas spread like candlelight in a dark room.
Voiceless being heard for the first time.
Equity for everyone.
Battles cease, generosities increase.
Relief washes over like a wave of comfort.
All can breathe and calmly think.
Nature can thrive without threat.
Can you see the Eagle with the arrows in her talon
How she drops them to clutch the olive branch?
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