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Best of Irish Poetry 2010
Editor: Matthew Sweeney

Songs of Earth and Light
Barbara Korun poems translated by Theo Dorgan

Done Dating DJs
by Jennifer Minniti-Shippey
Winner, 2008 Fool for Poetry Competition

Richesses: Francophone Songwriter Poets
Edited and translated by Aidan Hayes

Munster Literature Centre

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SANDRA ANN WINTERS

Sandra Ann Winters teaches writing and Irish literature in the English Department at Guilford College in Greensboro, NC, USA. She owns a home in Millstreet, County Cork, Ireland, where she spends several months each year reading and writing. She has published in many journals such as the North Carolina Literary Review, Tough Times Companion, and Voices. Three of her poems have been finalists in the Salem College International Literary Awards in 2009 and 2010. The North Carolina Literary Review has nominated her poem 'Water Signs' for the 2011 Pushcart Prize. Her poem 'The Deaf Dog' was a finalist in the Inkwell Journal’s 14^th annual Poetry Contest (Judge: Mark Doty).  

Death of Alaska

First Prize, 2011 Gregory O'Donoghue Competition

My white German Shepherd,

female ears tuned to sounds

I could not hear, disappeared the day my son left.

She must have heard him going;

he who cut me off like the sharp snip of scissors

against the papery peony stems.

She, my white cavalier, could not keep

me from the way he redrafted our love,

flinging himself, a young man now, into the universe.

For him I canvassed the stars, glossed against a crepe sky.

For her, I tramped through copeswood and brambles—

flashlight a-beam, calling her name.

But no staccato bark and no cantering boy returned,

and I stood alone in the spring cold midnight.

©2011 Sandra Ann Winters

Author Links

Order the North Carolina Literary Review (Winters poem in Issue 19)

Cork Spring Literary Festival Blog about Winters's prize