award-winning poetry collections

Poetry Collection ‘a silence or two’ wins Merit Book Award

~ Jennifer Hambrick ~ 2 Comments

I am extremely honored and humbled that my most recent book, a silence or two (Red Moon Press), has received a 2025 Merit Book Award from the Haiku Society of America.

According to the Haiku Society of America, the HSA Merit Book Awards “recognize the best haiku and related books published in a given year in the English language.”

a silence or two is a deeply intimate poetic statement. It is raw, visceral. It deals with subject matter at once personal and universal—the body and it failings, trauma, death, loss, identity, and ultimately, the state of fractured wholeness so deep a part of our shared humanity in a broken world. This collection manifests in imagery and narratives that transcend the “objective realism” common to haiku to explore precarious terrain—namely the often unvoiced emotions hidden where flesh, soul, and spirit intersect in the depths of embodiment—for which expected languaging and usual modes of discourse are often insufficient.

Rattle poetry journal editor Tim Green and I discuss a silence or two extensively on Rattlecast.

It is significant that the emotional journey of this collection unfolds in haiku and short prose poems. Haiku tends to be viewed by poets and non-poets as a sort of toss-off genre unworthy of the kind of deep and rigorous study poets and literary scholars routinely devote to other genres. This common misconception and others, however, overlook centuries of profound and profoundly moving poetry in haiku’s original Japanese traditions and in the more recent though vibrant English-language tradition, to which the likes of Richard Wright, Sonia Sanchez, Jack Kerouac, Gary Snyder, and Jane Hirshfield have made significant contributions.

Common misconceptions about haiku also fail to consider that, like all other artistic genres and mediums, haiku invites exploration and the expansion of expressive possibilities. Indeed, haiku is a poetic vehicle uniquely and powerfully suited for conveying extraordinary ways of seeing the world and giving voice to the limitless depths of human emotion.

On every page of a silence or two, I broke the cardinal rules of English-language haiku and pushed other boundaries in ways that some would see as taboo. I am hugely gratified that HSA Merit Book Award competition judges Scott Mason and Patricia Machmiller saw the value of those risks for this book as a work of art and for the genre of haiku in English more broadly.

My deepest thanks and a deep bow to them. Deep thanks also to Jim Kacian and Red Moon Press for publishing this collection.

Announcing the Arrival of Award-Winning Poetry Collection ‘In the High Weeds’

~ Jennifer Hambrick ~ Leave a comment

Jennifer Hambrick - In the High Weeds coverI’m delighted to announce the arrival of my most recent poetry collection, In the High Weeds, winner of the Stevens Manuscript Prize of the National Federation of State Poetry Societies.

Competition judge Jared Smith describes In the High Weeds as “an extraordinary journey from youth to maturity,” and writes, “The imagery is concise and brilliant, and the craftsmanship is masterful.”

Read Smith’s full commentary on In the High Weeds and purchase copies of the collection here. 

Copies of In the High Weeds are also available from the National Federation of State Poetry Societies, and through Amazon.

I am most humbled by the warm welcome Smith and others have extended to this collection, and most grateful to the National Federation of State Poetry Societies for supporting poets nationwide.

Winner of 2020 Stevens Poetry Manuscript Competition

~ Jennifer Hambrick ~ 2 Comments
Photo: “Lost in a dream” by akamarpreet licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

I am deeply honored and humbled to have won the 2020 Stevens Poetry Manuscript Competition of the National Federation of State Poetry Societies for my forthcoming full-length poetry collection In The High Weeds.

Here is competition judge and Colorado Poet Jared Smith’s commentary on my manuscript:

In The High Weeds is an extraordinary journey from youth to maturity through an immersion in art, mythology, and family memories that provide a path that glimmers and illuminates our lives through the darkness laid out beneath uncertain stars.  It entrances me.  The imagery is concise and brilliant, and the craftsmanship is masterful across a wide range of poetic styles as the poet explores the mysteries of childhood, the greater responsibilities and frightening shadows of adulthood, and the challenges of raising healthy children in an uncertain world.  Even as, the poet writes, “Time rolls out and ebbs/and ebbs again until the shore is dry/as wasp’s wings,” we find ourselves lifted on the fragile latticework of those dry wings and transported through her words to a meditative understanding of the peacefulness of all things in balance. The poet nears closure with the magnificent poetic statement that “Now is the time to leave/and wander/to bow to the mountains/and breathe the wisdom/of saints and sages/to savor the sweet lantern light/of the pear tree/to shadow the river’s bending banks/and bathe in the petals/of the weeping cherry.” What a wonderful journey to take with a brave and compassionate guide.

To launch In The High Weeds, I will be featured in a reading from the book at the 2021 Convention of the National Federation of State Poetry Societies on Saturday, 12 June 2021 on Zoom. You can register for the conference here.

In The High Weeds will be published by mid-June. Watch here for more details.

My heartfelt thanks to Jared Smith for this honor, and to the NFSPS for offering this and other opportunities for poets across the U.S. to share their art.