5th Annual Carmen Ziolkowski Poetry Prize
The judges along with Carmen’s son Jim Ziolkowski are pleased to announce the selected poems for this year’s Carmen Ziolkowski Poetry Prize.
First Prize, $500, donated by Carmen’s family, was awarded to local Sarnia poet Grace Vermeer.
Vermeer’s contemplative poem “A Glimpse of the Afterlife Cento for Carmen” interpreted lines from Carmen’s own poetry book The Moon Before the Sun into innovative images that captured Carmen’s spirit and won over the judges. Carmen’s son, Jim Ziolkowski, was particularly moved: “This is an excellent use for my mom’s poetry and indeed a tribute to my mom.”
Both Second Prize, $250, and Third Prize, $100, were awarded to Stratford Poet Laureate David Stones. Stones’ second prize win “Spring Comes to Kyiv” was memorable for its moving depiction of nature’s resilience amidst human suffering while his third prize win “Hummingbird” conveyed profound observations in small creatures.
Honourable Mentions went to Fizza Abbas, a journalist from Pakistan, for her poem “Bloody Roots,” to Desiree Penner of Manitoba for her poem “When Apricot Light Glazes the Prairies” and to Ingersoll poet Mary Anne Griffiths for her poem “Syntax.”
All of the six winning poems are posted below.
The Uproar Literary Committee is also hosting a reading for past and present contest finalists along with an Open Mic. This will happen during the First Friday activities and will be held at the Lawrence House Centre For The Arts in Sarnia on Friday, August 7, 2026 at 7:00 PM in the Turret Room. Everyone is welcome.
A Glimpse of the Afterlife: Cento for Carmen
Stars stud the black sky where the snow tree grows and I in my white bones housed among branches. Slender tree fingers, why am I here in yellow forsythia again, running among daisies. Now I am a leaf between the sky and the ravine. I will call on the wind Oh, Bright Spirit, open these
Spring Comes to Kyiv
Even in the sting and sear of these shrapnel days, the gardens insist on their green rebellions, stubborn fists of tulips pushed through the lingering skin of frost and body parts, the lilacs by the Dnipro gushing violet beside grandmothers planting potatoes among the sandbags, hands wizened by survival, each seed an argument with the
My Hummingbird
My hummingbird does not arrive, it materializes, like an answer, suddenly not there and then is, an invention on emerald fly wheels, a drone-whirring of liquid engines suspended among the blooms on threads of wind and magic. What force each morning commands him to my garden? What bottle green and flaring fuse holds him in
Bloody Roots
Pink-beige shells and coral dust slept deep inside the limestone that patched the garden’s edge – pale scars where my mother tucked wild portulaca into the criss-crossing cracks of earth. I watched her hands move through the soil tending bougainvillea, periwinkle, and azure morning glory shaping boxes and squares of green against the pale, powdered
When Apricot Light Glazes the Prairies,
I want to learn to love my soft body as if she cradled clutches of speckled killdeer eggs, fat raindrops on ripe saskatoon berries, shaggy hayfields, just before their first haircut, or dandelion puffs, the bigger the better, blowing wishes. I want to learn to love my zigzag stretch marks as if they honoured a
Syntax
There was no other salad in our home but salata. Greens from the garden spring through fall and the anemic head lettuce for winter. Oil. Vinegar. Salt. The recipe straightforward like all the women in the family. When I tear the leaves my hands are many hands: the thick, worn fingers of Baka the club-nailed