Emma Trelles selected Levitations by Nicholas Reiner and Grief Logic by Crystal AC Salas for the first Alta California Chapbook prize. Their winning chapbooks are available in bilingual editions published by Gunpowder Press. Both poets will be featured in the Mission Poetry Series Reading on May 7, 2022, 1:00 pm in the Santa Barbara Public Library’s Faulkner Gallery.
Of Levitations, judge Emma Trelles said: “Equal parts lament, memoir, and lyric, this chapbook is written in a wholly original voice that is as accomplished as it is precise. Each poem reveals another sharply crafted layer of memory and observation — whether about family, chess, death, or how remembering is a way of keeping love intact.”
Of Grief Logic, Trelles writes: “These poems read and sometimes physically appear like a sprawling Latinx pillowbook, filled with the intimate and honest particulars of family and what it means to navigate language, landscape, and girl/woman/hood. This chap is all heart, image, and sound — and then some.”
Honorable mention is given to Scared the Sun Will Suck Us into the Sky by Brent Ameneyro. Of this work, Trelles noted: “All these poems have something to offer — vivid and personal images, a collage of narrative, conversational, and meditative styles, and the occasional arresting swerve into the surreal, with a real precision and attention given to each word and line.”
Also noted by the judge for distinction as finalists are:
- Jarabe de Arte by Yago Cura
- Traces by Olga García Echeverría
- Among the Rocks by Esteban Ismael
- Canto Immigrante: Border Cantos by Gerardo Pacheco
- Ten Found on Canon Perdido by Melinda Palacio
Emma Trelles is Poet Laureate of the City of Santa Barbara. Gunpowder Press thanks her for her commitment to this project. We appreciate all the poets who submitted work for consideration for our inaugural chapbook project.