I am honoured to receive First Place for my poetry in Room‘s 2015 Fiction and Poetry Contest. Room Magazine is Canada’s oldest literary journal by and about women. Published quarterly by the West Coast Feminist Literary Magazine Society, Room showcases fiction, poetry, reviews, art work, interviews and profiles about the female experience.
Read the poem here.
Judge Jen Currin’s Comments:
“Stephanie McKenzie’s ‘Cut from the Guyana Journals’ is a beautifully crafted, minimalist poem which takes as its subject matter the political realities of present-day Guyana. The catalogue of images builds up to create a disturbing portrait of a country ravaged by drug crime, ‘scavenged by gods of prey’ and the ‘sick faith’ of global capitalism. The metapoetic turn in the final stanzas is unexpected an compelling—the speaker adopts the ‘I’ to critique the lyric tradition, seeming to say, even as she adopts it, that this subject position is insufficient to address the brutalities and injustices the poem seeks to depict.”