MQR is pleased to announce that A. Van Jordan has selected Bret Shepard’s “Here But Nowhere” as the winner of the Goldstein Poetry Prize.
From Alaska, Bret Shepard has lived throughout the Pacific and Arctic coasts. Currently, he is an Assistant Professor of English at Cabrini University. Recent poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Arts & Letters, Crazyhorse, Mississippi Review, Southern Review, and elsewhere. He is the author of Place Where Presence Was, winner of the 2019 Moon City Press Book Award for Poetry, as well as two chapbooks, including The Territorial, which recently won the 2020 Midwest Chapbook Award from the Laurel Review.
This poem sequence sustains both the development of the landscape and the emotional resonance attached to it. If the poem is true and, “Emptiness is unresolved movement between two/ events,” then the many memorable lines of this poem are the resolution we desire. Reading this poem, I never get so lost in the exterior of the setting that I forget the interiority of the speaker and the figures inhabiting the sacred land; I never get lost because the poet guides me throughout with a Virgil-esque eye on what’s important not only to see but also to experience along the way.
-A. Van Jordan
The award was established in 2002 by a generous gift from the Office of the President of the University of Michigan in honor of poet and former MQR editor Laurence Goldstein. “Here But Elsewhere” will be published in the Winter 2022 issue of MQR. Thank you to everyone who submitted their work.
