Friday Harbor Poetry Gardens contest winners announced

||| FROM JULIE GREENE for TOWN OF FRIDAY HARBOR |||

The Town of Friday Harbor and Friday Harbor Arts Commission have announced the winners of their third Poetry Gardens Contest. A blind judging process was used to review 162 entries submitted by San Juan County residents. Selection of the 30 winning poems was made by current Washington State Poet Laureate Derek Sheffield who noted they make “a really strong, evocative selection” for the Poetry Gardens.

Winning poems will be published in a limited-edition booklet and e-book as well as engraved for display at four outdoor “poetry gardens” located in Friday Harbor at the San Juan Community Theatre and Mullis Community Senior Center, next to the post office, and in the waterfront viewing area below Downriggers.

All poets and interested community members are encouraged to visit the gardens now for a last look at the previous winning poems before they are replaced with the new poems in early 2027.

Contest winners: Judith Azrael (“Refugees”), Shauna Marie Barrows (“A Fish” and “The Field”), Nick Benavides (“Inside the Vault” and “My Watch”), August d’Ambruoso (“A Reflection from the Madrona Tree” and “Ferry Ramp”), Susie Foster Hale (“Parallel Universe” and “You Make Me Feel Like a Million Bells”), Sally Green (“Finding the Way” and “Skagit Flats, Near La Conner”), Samuel Green (“Graveside” and “Neighboring”), Sharon Ho (“Moving Day Comes Suddenly”), Kate Hodgkin Sears (“Island Education”), Lynne Mercer (“A Conversation Between Neighbors” and “Saying Yes”), Tara Mesalik MacMahon (“Sometimes the Only Passage is to Glide”), Tara Moghadam (“The Memory Care Pantoum”), Anthony Morris (“Sparrow-Crowned Wit” and “Sunset at South Beach”), Diane Nash-McFeron (“Childhood Memory”), Pamela Pulver (“Standing Tree”), Madeleine Swift Butcher (“Behemoth”), Gary Thompson (“The First Lesson of Boats”), Marianne Tynan (“March”), Karen Vedder (“Memories of a House Raising—March 1975”), William Weissinger (“A Slow Gathering of Quiet”), and Ed Wilson (“Break Free” and “Night Watchman”).