Alta California Chapbook Prize

Emma Trelles, photo by Regina Reese

The Alta California Chapbook Series is edited by Emma Trelles. She is the daughter of Cuban immigrants, an Academy of America Poets Fellow, and the author of Tropicalia (University of Notre Dame Press), winner of the AndrĂ©s Montoya Poetry Prize and a finalist for Foreword-Indies poetry book of the year.

Judge Alexandra Lytton Regalado and series editor Emma Trelles have chosen the winners of the 3rd Gunpowder Press Alta California Chapbook Prize: Amelia Rodriguez’s The First Amelia and Fred Arroyo’s Alba and Other Songs. The winning chapbooks will be available from Gunpowder Press in Spring 2024.

The flowing, associative poems of The First Amelia sing with confidence and travel through the veins of memory, family, and the landscapes of Colima. Amelia Rodriguez conjures images of sparring hawks, crushed rubies, trees glassed with ice, a snared kite, and other wondrous and unique visions. She converses with the men and women of her past, and at the center is a twinned self, “two Amelias hovering / above the turning earth,” that is hungry and ever-present.

Alexandra Lytton Regalado

Judge
Although Alba and Other Songs is only 14 pages long, this lyrical and well-crafted chapbook has the breadth and substance of a full-length collection. Focusing on the said and unsaid, in an imagistic and incantatory style, Fred Arroyo has written an honest yet tender examination of a father-son relationship. Steeped in the nature of his barrio, Arroyo’s poems trace the borders of land and body to tell a story of family, exile, and belonging: “There are no boundaries / save the lines on maps. // There is no time / save the eye of memory.”

Alexandra Lytton Regalado

Judge

The judges recognized, as Honorable Mention, Against Surrealism by Luis Torres and nine finalists:

  • J.P DĂĄvila, Poemas Sueltas
  • Diane de Anda, Reflections
  • Chelsea Guevara, Somewhere Over the Border
  • SG Huerta, Origen
  • Karl Michael Igesias, From the Future
  • Max Lemuz, SoCal Sinai
  • Mia Leonin, Ofrenda
  • Gerardo Pacheco Matus, Desert Cantos Poemas
  • Marilyn Melissa Salguero, Blister

The winners of the second Alta California Prize, selected by Francisco AragĂłn from an incredibly rich collection of submissions, are Florencia Milito‘s Sor Juana and Gabriel Ibarra‘s On Display. Francisco also recognized Felipe De La Rosa‘s Summer Blooms in Paramount as an honorable mention. In addition to the winners and honorable mention, eight poets were distinguished as finalists including:

  • Elaine Alarcon, Blood Echoes 
  • Li Yun Alvarado, Luz Like Love
  • Kenneth Chacon, How the Cholo Became a Mystic & Other Dreamer Poems
  • Tomas Moniz, Theory of Falling Bodies
  • Melinda Palacio, Alamar
  • Jorge Quintana, Dying in America
  • Linda Ravenswood, A Poem Is a House
  • Danny Romero, My Father’s Friends

Of Milito’s winning manuscript, Sor Juana, Francisco writes:

Sor Juana reveals an exquisite alchemy—the provocative life and death of the baroque master, but also the speaker’s own “inherited trauma” as “a child of [a] dictatorship,” which follows her into exile, prompting: “This is the heart of the wound.” The artistry here is replete with skill and grace. “History wedges itself / inside four syllables”—the thesis of this breathtaking book-length poem.

Of Ibarra’s winning manuscript, On Display, Francisco writes:

“Mira, tu Papa is on TV,” says a mother, coaxing her boy to imagine that Erik Estrada is his father. “Our time together—episodes / rerun    is never real, only instances / of his dark, oily hair mirroring mine / as I peddle closer, reach out, / trace the round static of his face.” Wow. It’s a heartwrenching moment that broke me. On Display is moving art, the poet’s craft up to the task.

Of honorable mention, Felipe De La Rosa’s Summer Blooms in Paramont, Francisco writes:

“I listen for the elotero,” the single-line stanza that opens Summer Blooms in Paramount, hints at what will unfold across its twelve pieces, deploying white space as part of its score, shuttling seamlessly across linguistic borders. There’s a lovely melange of southern California landscapes here, where “ephemera kisses / [g]low like dandelions” or where the speaker invites you to â€œ[f]ly inside water    swiftly open     your pond-eyes” to these gorgeous poems.

As the first Alta California Chapbooks, series editor Emma Trelles selected Nicholas Reiner‘s Levitations and Crystal AC Salas‘s Grief Logic, both published in 2022.

Of Levitations, by Nicholas Reiner, Emma Trelles writes:

“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, by Crystal AC Salas, Emma Trelles says:

“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.”