My poem “To a Son on the Verge of Divorce” won the Broad River Review‘s 2011 Rash Award in Poetry. I received the news at the end of December, but the journal just published the finalists and winner on its Web site yesterday, so now I’m making my official announcement.

The poem will be published in a 2012 issue of the Broad River Review, and I receive a $500 award.

Winning any contest is an honor, but this award is particularly special for me because it’s named for Ron Rash and because it was blind-judged by Cathy Smith Bowers. I was lucky enough to study with Ron Rash at a summer workshop at Wildacres, and his grasp of the English language–its lilt and subtleties–amazes me. And I greatly admire the poetry of Cathy Smith Bowers–The Love That Ended Yesterday in Texas is intelligent, funny, and finely wrought, as are all her books.