Poems Online
Some of Celisa Steele’s poems are available online:
- “How Language Is Lost” (How Language Is Lost)
- “The Feeder” (Wild Goose Poetry Review)
- “Pie at 3 AM” (Wild Goose Poetry Review)
- “Lazarus Dreads His High School Reunion” (Redheaded Stepchild)
Publications
Celisa Steele’s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in the following publications:
- Always on Friday (an anthology of work by the Friday Noon Poets)
- Anglican Theological Review
- Bay Leaves (published by the North Carolina Poetry Council)
- The Best of the Fuquay-Varina Reading Series
- Best of Poetry Hickory
- Bloodshot: Journal of Contemporary Culture
- The Comstock Review
- North Carolina Conversations (published by the North Carolina Humanities Council)
- Emrys Journal
- Iodine Poetry Journal
- Inch
- Kakalak: Anthology of Carolina Poets
- The Nature of Things: A Poetry and Prose Anthology
- Pinesong (published by the North Carolina Poetry Society)
- Redheaded Stepchild
- Second Annual Nazim Hikmet Poetry Festival: A Chapbook of Talks and Poetry
- The South Carolina Review
- The Sow’s Ear Poetry Review
- Tar River Poetry
- What Matters (an anthology published by Jacar Press)
- Wild Goose Poetry Review
Awards and Honors
- Tar River Poetry nominated my poem “Fear Not the Design of the Angels,” published in its spring 2013 issue, for a Pushcart Prize.
- In September 2013, Celisa was named to a two-year term as poet laureate of Carrboro, North Carolina. The Carrboro Arts Committee asked Celisa to continue as poet laureate for an additional year; she completed her three years as the poet laureate of Carrboro at the end of June 2016.
- Celisa was awarded one-week residency at Wildacres Retreat in 2013.
- Aimee Nezhukumatathil awarded Celisa’s poem “Jellyfish Creed” one of two honorable mentions in the Rita Dove Poetry Award in the Salem College 2012 International Literary Awards.
- “To a Son on the Verge of Divorce” was chosen by Cathy Smith Bowers as the winner of the Broad River Review 2011 Rash Award in Poetry.
- “Beauties and Beasts” took first place in The South Carolina Review’s 2009-2010 Poetry Contest, judged by Matthew Dickman.
- For the poem “How Language Is Lost,” Celisa was selected as one of ten winners in the 2010 Nâzım Hikmet Poetry Competition.
- Celisa was selected as one of four participants from the central region of North Carolina to work with distinguished poet Becky Gould Gibson for the 2009-2010 Gilbert-Chappell Distinguished Poets Series.
- “Four on the Fourth” was recognized with an honorable mention in the North Carolina Poetry Society’s 2009 Thomas H. McDill Award.
- “Thoughts from the Tarmac” was awarded first prize in the North Carolina Poetry Society’s 2009 Joanna Catherine Scott Award.
- “Elegy for a Scarf Borrowed from a Mother Now Dead and Left on a Trolley Car in Budapest at Christmastime” was awarded third place in the 2007 Charles Shull Contest for Traditional Poetry, sponsored by the Poetry Council of North Carolina.
- “A Husband Laments Being Alone on a Business Trip in the Caribbean and Wishes His Wife a Virus” was awarded third place in the 2007 Ellen T. Johnston-Hale Contest for Light Verse, sponsored by the Poetry Council of North Carolina.
- “Sometimes I Want to Kiss You at the Grocery Store” (as “Sometimes I Want to Kiss You in Aisle 7”) was recognized with an honorable mention in the North Carolina Poetry Society’s 2007 Poetry of Love Contest.
- “Failure and Fame” was awarded third prize in the North Carolina Poetry Society’s 2007 Joanna Catherine Scott Award.
- “Emily Examines a Family Photo” was awarded third place in the North Carolina Poetry Society’s 2004 Joanna Catherine Scott Award.
- “Emily Just Before Easter” was awarded an honorable mention in the North Carolina Poetry Society’s 2002 Joanna Catherine Scott Award.