2022 Library Undergraduate Poetry Prize Winners
University of Oregon Libraries and Oregon Poetry Association are extremely pleased to announce the winners of the second Library Undergraduate Poetry Prize: Amelia Hamerlynck and Mia Vance.
This biannual award will be given to these undergraduate students at the OPA conference on October 8, 2022, for excellent poems in whose composition the library has played a part. The prize consists of a $500 award to each winner and the publication of the winning poems in OPA’s Verseweavers, an annual anthology of prize-winning poems from OPA’s contests.
The poetry prize emerged in 2018 from collaborative discussions between the two organizations. The UO Libraries Special Collections is the official archive for the Oregon Poetry Collection, a rich collection of volumes by Oregon poets or about Oregon going back to the 19th-century, which was founded by the OPA and is still growing, mainly through its members’ contributions of their new publications. The director of Special Collections, David de Lorenzo, said “we wanted to continue to add to the book collection by supporting young poets whose work is worthy of recognition.” Jeff Staiger, Humanities Librarian in Knight Library, who led the team of readers, noted that “we received nearly 20 applications for this round, an impressive number for a time when university activities continue to be challenged by a global pandemic. The review committee met completely virtual to assess so many accomplished poems in such a wide range of styles and approaches.”
We are very grateful to the readers and to the OPA volunteers who have enthusiastically supported the Poetry Prize since its inception. The UO Libraries is thrilled to have the support of the OPA to continue to make this award a reality.
BIOGRAPHIES AND WINNING POEMS OF PRIZE WINNERS:
Amelia Hamerlynck Personal Statement:
I am a third-year cultural anthropology student with minors in creative writing and German. I grew up in Arizona and Eastern Oregon, so I tend to identify as a desert-dweller. But I am also half-French and have lived in Germany, so I have strong familial and sentimental ties to Europe. I have written poetry for as long as I can remember but didn’t seriously plan on studying it until participating in the Kidd workshop my sophomore year. Now, I am writing a poetry book for my Honors College senior thesis in which I retell stories from the Ancient Greek and Roman Canon with renewed focus on gender. Anthropology has a huge influence on my work’s subject matter. I am most interested in the stories we tell ourselves to make sense of the world and how those stories influence our identities. As such, I often weave elaborate allusions to myth, folklore, and pop culture with confessional writing, which reflects my general artistic attitude that everything is a remix of something else. After graduation, I am interested in pursuing museum-adjacent jobs because of my interest in bridging the gap between academia and the public. My long-term goals with poetry are to develop a strong writing habit, submit for publication regularly, and get involved in poetic communities.
Amelia Hamerlynck Winning Poem:
Heritage braid
This is the story of my Sephardic
great great grandfather
who gave me my Mediterranean tan
and caterpillar eyebrows:
He changed his name from Mois to Morris
to sound more Gentile after leaving Tunisia.
The family told my Mama he’d converted.
His baby son’s stillborn body
in a Jewish cemetery suggests otherwise:
his wife Mathilde traded in her crucifix
for a star of David.
At five, I begged Mama to let me wear
the pewter Hamsa hand he made
a hundred years ago,
but no. If I lost it,
she would never forgive me.
This is the story of taming wild things:
Every time you look into a dog’s toothy grin
and feel something, it’s ’cause their kind
have walked beside us since the Last Glacial Maxim
twenty thousand years ago,
and lent a helping paw in every single
domestication process since.
This is the story of cave paintings:
if you squint, you can’t always
tell them apart from Cathedral frescoes.
This is the story of an epigenetic memory:
When the doctor puts the IUD in,
my cup overflows with joy. Heavy
lies the weight of unburned witches
in my bloodline – beauties married off to beasts.
I envision my Mami discreetly popping pills,
feeding Mama soupe aux poireaux et aux pommes de terre
with a glass of Catholic silence.
This is the story of your gut bacteria:
You’re not a you, but an ecosystem.
A host.
Just like Mama metamorphosed
into to throw Summer and Winter
equinox parties every year,
although I still don’t know why.
They’re Pagan holidays
out of vogue since Constantine.
So here’s the story of Mama:
In a 1970s cinema
thick with secondhand smoke,
she saw the Devil’s face
in the movie monster
and went home to tell Mami
she’d never attend Mass again.
’Cause ain’t the Church française
just practical effects like that?
The threat of Hell – smoke and mirrors.
No more real than a giant gorilla climbing the Chrysler.
This is the story of buttercup remnants
fossilized in mammoth stomachs: Imagine
a Neanderthal making love to a Sapien
in a yellow field.
They’re your thick-skulled ancestors.
You may not remember them,
but your bones do.
Every time you learn about a bigfoot –
Tallman, Song, Sasquatch, Yeti –
remember that we used to have neighbors.
What died in us with them?
Is that why we’re profoundly lonely?
There’s an ape-shaped hole in our hearts,
all of us.
Mia Vance Personal Statement:
Mia Vance is an emerging poet pursuing a Bachelor of Arts in English and Creative Writing at the University of Oregon in Eugene, where she currently lives with her husband, her son, and two cats. Mia came to poetry as a venue for self-expression as a child, and while her creative interests have commingled over the years in the forms of fiction, theatre arts, and dance, the literary arts have found their way again and again into her life and career.
Mia has performed her poetry solo, in collaboration with fellow local poets, dance performance groups, and alongside her husband, the incredible composer and musician Cullen Vance. In addition to writing and performing, she is honored to have served on the Poetry Editorial Team at UO’s Unbound Journal from 2021-2022. In 2022-2023, she will have the privilege of pursuing her Master of Arts in Writing at the National University of Ireland in Galway.
When not studying, writing, or performing, Mia can be found tucked away with a skein of yarn or a good book in the comfiest chair in the house, covered in cat hair. In lieu of popping by for tea, visit her at www.facebook.com/mia.v.poetry or on Instagram@mia.v.poetry.
Mia Vance Winning Poem:
Fault Lines
I look for what’s left
of my father’s face
in the mirror, tracing
the topography of cheek-
bone and nose, a field
of furrowed brow, canyon
of cleft chin (genetic),
our eyes the same shade
of peat moss, same quick-
silver ribbons in the thickets
of our hair; different
last names now–a distance
growing inch by auburn inch.
I search through the coats
long gone cold in my grand-
father’s closet, feel along
the sleeves for phantom
limbs, and sink my hands
to the bottom of each
pocket, hoping to find
what he carried, to
unbury the key to a house
by the sea that smells
like Easter Sunday
all year long, but I come up
empty-handed every time.
I listen for a hint (the haver,
the waver) of my great-
grandfather’s voice
in my throat, watch
the weathervane twitch
to see which way it might
be coming from, which way
it might be going; try to
harmonize and hope
somehow he’ll hear me
where he is and know me:
an echo arcing back
against the centuries.
I dig for the language
my great-great-
grandfather left planted
in the land that it might
have the chance to grow,
to feed a nation
he would never live
to see; lift the russet
grammar from its
grave, rinse off the blight
of empire, and take it home
to teach me how to sing
hymns as old as sin.
I follow the fault line
of my great-great-great-
grandfather’s name,
look for its likeness
on every map I find,
pray it hasn’t faded
with age, lost its way
in a fold, or
over a border, sunk
in a crease in the sea
that spreads–that keeps
spreading–between us,
never to be seen again.
