#pebblebrookpress

Our imprint, Pebblebrook Press, recently held a poetry contest to celebrate the release of Mark Zimmermann's collection of lipograms, Impersonations. Entrants were challenged to write a poem using the lipogram constraint, which requires poets to deliberately exclude certain letters from their poems. Zimmermann was the judge; he read the poems blindly and selected Jason Primm's "Stoneboat" as the winner. Primm, whose short story "Light" appeared in Stoneboat 2.1, used only the letters in the poem's title to compose his work, which appears below.

Stoneboat

An eon

sane.

No boots.

No boats.

No bent notes.

One soon noon?

As season

ebbs,

beat sonatas

on stone.

Toast taboos.

Nose ears.

Eat beast.

Boast:

“O Babe!”,

“O boon!”

As oboes

sob.

Judge Mark Zimmerann says, "In the winning poem, 'Stoneboat,' the author sets to work with only seven letters to use—a very challenging constraint—and comes up with a free associative word salad of sound and image that embodies the kinds of surprises that can result from lipogrammatic writing. Thanks to all who entered the contest. Your work shows, once again, that matters of poetic freedom, creative expression, and formal constraint aren’t mutually exclusive—not by a longshot."

The Pebblebrook Press team joins Zimmermann in thanking all of the poets who entered the contest. The work was creative, thought-provoking, and fun to read. Zimmermann had a difficult task in choosing just one winner, and we're glad we weren't charged with making the decision.