Birch
“In the lineage of Gerard Manley Hopkins’ compound and clustered perceptions of our dappled nature, BIRCH glistens with exponential desire. There’s beauty in couplings (milkstar, sunshafts, lakeice) and the doublings of ‘boy to boy,’ body to landscape, ‘like to like.’ BIRCH slurs and praises, drawing our attention to our math and meth, our tenderness and violence, our beauty as well as the ‘harder real.’ Risky, raw, playful, enigmatic, BIRCH startles in its contrasts and its attention to change: ‘we play into/ a song we think we hear as ice melts at the/ frothing sea.’ It celebrates the transformative power of our relations with our lovers and our surroundings. It incites: ‘go up the cliff/ lone pine atop it/ that would be a lilac bush/ him running past you/ turning into lilacs.’”
— Susan Briante, Judge