Ballard Spahr Prize 2023 Winner

Caroline Harper New is the author of A History of Half-Birds, winner of the 2023 Ballard Spahr Prize for Poetry. She is a poet and visual artist from the Gulf Coast with a background in anthropology, and she holds an MFA in Writing from the University of Michigan. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in American Poetry Review, Cincinnati Review, Palette Poetry, Southern Humanities Review, and Driftwood Press. She is winner of Palette Poetry’s 2023 Love & Eros Prize, the Malahat Review’s 2023 Open Season Award, the Cincinnati Review’s 2022 Robert and Adele Schiff Award, and Bellevue Literary Review’s 2022 John & Eileen Allman Prize for Poetry. She lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

CONTENTS

 

 

PART I
WIDDERSHINS

 

The Elephant Mother XXX

Widdershins XXX

The Archaeology Magazine XXX

Garden of Eve XXX

Management of the Living XXX

Fieldnotes on Cape San Blas XXX

Auguries by Mouth XXX

Ekphrasis XXX

Fieldnotes on Carrying XXX

Driving Through Dunedin XXX

 

 

PART II
PARLOR TRICKS

 

Notes on Devotion XXX

The Bathtub XXX

If We Move Back in Together XXX

Fieldnotes on Hydrangeas XXX

Interview With a Cervidologist XXX

Etymology of Chlorophyll XXX

Patients Regain Song Before Speech XXX

If We Stage the Wizard of Oz With Alligators XXX

Fieldnotes on Juniper XXX

The Sargassum Fish XXX

My Ancestors in South Carolina XXX

Fieldnotes on the Bloodmoon XXX

Ereshkigal, Our Sinkhole Sister XXX

Love Poem for My Bird Dog XXX

 

 

PART III
HYPOTHETICAL MOONS

 

Moon Song for My Mother XXX

Searching for Amelia (I) XXX

Fieldnotes on the Red-Bellied Woodpecker XXX

The Women of Weeki Wachee XXX

Searching for Amelia (II) XXX

Parlor Tricks XXX

Fieldnotes on Red XXX

The Bioluminescent Bays of Vieques XXX

Fieldnotes on Hypothetical Moons XXX

Searching for Amelia (III) XXX

Elk Lake XXX

The Loon’s Solid Bones Help Her Sink XXX

 

 

Notes XXX

Gratitude XXX