Winners Announced for the Change of Seasons Creative Writing Contest

Last Fall, the Creative Writing Special Interest Group (SIG) at the Howe Writing Center (HWC) held a creative writing contest focused on the theme Change of Seasons.
Thank you to everyone who shared their work with us. Members of the Creative Writing SIG along with HWC faculty and staff joined in the judging process. We enjoyed reading many submissions across the genres of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction. Each piece offered a unique perspective on how we experience the world around us when the seasons change, and also on how people, relationships, and cultures change, too.
After careful deliberation, we’re now happy to announce the winners! First prize received a $100 Amazon Gift Card; the runner-up received a $50 Amazon Gift Card.
Keep in mind, we've got another creative writing contest coming up for the Spring semester! Look out for more details here on our website and on our social channels (@HCWEMiami) come early March.
First Prize: T. Mesnick
for their poem "Pumpkin Patch"
Pumpkin Patch
Time eats your words &
spits out their bones:
smooth white ivory
reeking of déjà-vu
it’s easy to present & easiest
to forget—
spread meter like leather in the sun to dry
leave your self perplexed because
you didn’t mean to tell all these lies
Shaking hands & shaking other parts shaking
ink out of a pen and blowing on it.
That’s all it is. That moment
when you realize your thick skin is trans-
lucent & the sun has introduced
a burn:
That’s all it was.
Blood leaves stains & pumpkins
rot in November
In the Writer's Words:
"This was actually a piece that I originally wrote in high school but revised after I’d taken some poetry classes. The original draft was quite different, very vague; when I revised it, I decided to shift the focus to something more tangible. I wanted to portray the changing of seasons not as a passive act, but as a violent one: time and its passage are killers, after all. In this piece, I present the act of recording our words in the face of ultimate decay as an act that is futile but necessary to survival."
About the Writer:
T. Mesnick is a third year at Miami University majoring in Creative Writing and History. Previous publications include The Oakland Arts Review, High Noon, Asterism, Happy Captive, Inklings, and Rowan Hall. They were also the recipient of the Harris S. Abrams Award (via The Academy of American Poets) in 2019. Their work seeks to explore experience through humor and the subversion of expectations.
Runner-up: Alexander Benedict
for his poem "Fall as an Unsure Haircut"
Fall as an Unsure Haircut
after e.e. cummings
Fall as an unsure haircut
(which arrives skillfully
between spindled fingers)
parting branches where
scamper-squirrels bury
oaks strong and over
turn broadleaves bruised
from scissorwind.
trimming everything skillfully
Fall as an unsure
haircut splitting cattails
and unstirring water (skill
fully combing Breath,
and clipping Dead-
end streets) snips with
out feeling (from what
I’ve seen of his windsmooth
face) replacing color with
absence
In the Writer's Words:
"This poem was inspired from an e.e. cummings poem, “Spring is like a Perhaps Hand”. Instead of Spring, I wrote my own version about Fall in northern Ohio. Similar to cummings, I used an extended metaphor throughout my poem. In his piece, cummings characterized the season Spring as an invisible hand carefully moving fractions of flowers. In my piece, I characterized Fall as a skillful barber, trimming treetops and slowing water. I hoped to surround the season of Fall with a similar sense of wonder which cummings did so effortlessly in “Spring is like a Perhaps Hand”."
About the Writer:
Alexander Benedict is an English Literature & Creative Writing double-major at Miami University. His poetry has previously appeared or is forthcoming in Inklings, The Oakland Arts Review, and Happy Captive. In collaboration with Perh Machine Learning Group, he co-authored Machine Poetry Collection for the 2018 Fringe Festival. Currently, he moderates the online writing community r/OCPoetry and writes spontaneous, daily Flarf on @FlarfVanity.