WCPA announces this years Frank O'Hara Prize winners

Lynn E. Frederiksen of Framingham is the winner of this year's WCPA Poetry Contest: The Frank O'Hara Prize. Her poem "Flowers" was selected by contest judge Doug Holder from the 279 poems submitted by 112 entrants.

"I chose it," says Holder, "because in a time when we seem to be pitted against nature – this poem delicately and succinctly shows how we are connected with it, not divorced  from it.  It is a garden of a poem – a respite and a reminder of these awful times we are living through."

Patrick Nolan of Auburn took second place for an untitled poem, and Paul Szlosek of Worcester took third for "It Is Those Odd Little Shops I Like."

"I found the judging of the contest a pleasure," says Holder, "because it was like reading a fine collection of poetry. It was challenging because many of the poems were excellent – and the choices were hard to make.  One thing I can say is that the Worcester County Poetry Association and Worcester are definitely an epicenter of verse."

Frederiksen is a hearing-impaired dancer, educator and writer born in St. Croix, USVI. She holds a BA in biology and an MA in environmental affairs from Clark University and an MFA in dance from Smith College. For 15 years, she was on the drama/dance faculty at Tufts University and is currently an adjunct professor of theater arts at Clark University. With Wittenberg University professor Shih-Ming Li Chang, she has co-authored a multimedia educational resource, "Chinese Dance: In the Vast Land and Beyond" (Wesleyan University Press 2016), and is currently developing "Cultures of Dance Around the World," a college-level textbook for Human Kinetics Publishers. She has published poetry and prose in The Caribbean Writer and received the 2016 Marvin E. Williams Literary Prize for her poem "The Courage of Egrets."

The winning poems will be published in the next edition of The Worcester Review.  The winners also receive a cash award of $100 for first place, $50 for second place and $25 for third, and the Worcester County Poetry Association will host a reading for Holder and all the contest winners.

The contest, which was established in 1973, was renamed the Frank O'Hara Prize in 2009 as a tribute to the late poet who grew up in Grafton. O'Hara, who died in 1966, was the author of such   acclaimed books as "Lunch Poems" and "Meditations in an Emergency."