My Pushcart Prize Nomination

For a poem I almost discarded

As a working writer, I often reap seeds that were sown months and maybe years ago. This is simultaneously a frustrating and reassuring experience. It is frustrating because it is easy to want results fast once you’ve put in the effort; it is reassuring because, during slow periods, you can have faith that results may be about to show.

I’m in a slow period, somewhat finding myself licking my wounds from life… well, life-ing. But at the same time, I am not because I’ve been leading some wonderful workshops and also writing a play for children, which I’ll be able to talk about in a couple of months. Hint: the play will not be shown in the US. The slowness is more of a mind thing (and sometimes a financial thing). But that’s another story for another post.

I first wrote the second part of my Pushcart-nominated poem in January 2023 during one of my bi-yearly writing challenges. It was one of those poems that I re-visited every now and then, but I didn’t seem to gel with it enough to start sending it out. Then, during a workshop about editing that I attended online, we were asked to identify a poem from our ‘discard’ pile and work on it. During that session, I selected what would be the second part of my poem and tried to understand what wasn’t working and why it made me uncomfortable in some ways. I concluded that the poem felt like a consequence of an event, and it needed a front-end boost to reveal itself. As such, I needed to write the poem that was hiding beneath the poem.

The poem that came out of that exercise troubled me (of course) in a different way. It felt like it contained some cliches, and other than the fact that it presented itself in an unconventional format, it wasn’t saying anything new. And yet, it made complete sense, following my experience of the event. Could my experience be both valid and written over and over? I thought about it and concluded that yes, cliches exist due to our experiences, and sometimes … our stories are ones that millions of others have gone through, often despite the common knowledge.

My poem was pretty much cemented in place when it occurred to me that my poem contains nothing new because monsters/narcissists/abusers tend to have several things in common. That was it. [Apropos, note how much internal work goes into the poem beyond the page and why I need more naps.] I called it Instruction Manual: Sheets of Desire and sent it off to a suitable call—the International Human Rights Art Movement. It was accepted and subsequently published in a book called The Feminine Voice of Malta.

I am overjoyed about the nomination. It’s something you can’t apply for (editors of the books/websites/journals we’re published in take those decisions), so it was a complete and utter surprise. I couldn’t speak for a few minutes there. Is it a big deal to be nominated? Controversial, but most of us agree that it is.

Read more about the prize here. Here. And here. In the meantime, I leave you with this quote and a recording that I made for Wednesday Night Poets, a long-standing open mic led by Kai Coggin.

Maybe writers should celebrate a nomination simply because it makes them feel heard, and maybe as a result of feeling heard, their writing will blossom in new, important ways.
- Dana Shavin

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