The Word Works is proud to announce the 2023 selections for the Hilary Tham Capital Collection: Only Believe, by Jennifer Bartell, of Columbia, SC; and Around the Gate, by M.A. Nicholson, of New Orleans, LA.
This year’s judge, Carolyne Wright (author of Masquerade and This Dream the World: New & Selected Poems) says that Only Believe “is a sort of blues midrash, transposing ancient stories from the Bible and traditions of the sanctified Black church in which Martell’s speaker was raised, into the story of a young girl’s struggle to believe in herself. From its opening ‘Oh’ of praise to its penultimate ‘Behold: It is good,’ this volume … grips our attention as it recreates the world of the speaker’s rural childhood, where she is watched over by her grandmother Moonsie.”
Concerning Nicholson’s collection, she asks, “What does it mean to ‘stand around the gate’? In poet M.A. Nicholson’s native New Orleans, where many of these poems are set, the answer can tease, or be teased out, in a poem that comes early in the book, ‘Visiting Family at St. Roch Cemetery,’ where the speaker strives to comprehend the fate of ancestors, those dead gathered around her always in her city. …Nicholson’s speaker and her family and friends engage in … contemplative reflections and recollections, and invite readers to experience illuminating resonances as these poems go on ‘delivering / sustenance: / delivering / song.’”
Jennifer Bartell Boykin is the Poet Laureate of the City of Columbia. She received the MFA in Poetry from the University of South Carolina. Her debut book of poetry, Traveling Mercy, will be released in November 2023 under the name Jennifer Bartell. An alumna of Agnes Scott College, Jennifer is an Academy of American Poets Poet Laureate Fellow and has additional fellowships from Callaloo and The Watering Hole. Jennifer is an English teacher and is pursuing a Master of Library and Information Science at USC to become a school librarian. You can reach her online at www.jenniferbartellpoet.com.
M.A. Nicholson is a New Orleans poet, editor, and educator whose writing appears in Best New Poets 2022, Tilted House Review, Diode Poetry Journal, New Orleans Review, Bear Review, and elsewhere. An alumna of Loyola University and a M.F.A. graduate from the University of New Orleans—where she served as Associate Poetry Editor for Bayou Magazine—M.A. was the recipient of the 2021 Andrea Saunders Gereighty Academy of American Poets Award and is the co-founder of LMNL Arts, a nonprofit dedicated to supporting writers and fostering community through readings, workshops, festivals, anthologies, and more. Connect with M.A. at www.michellenicholsonpoetry.com.
We would also like to commend our seven finalists for 2023:
- Love from the Outer Bands, Mary E. Block (Miami, FL)
- A Conversation, Ditta Baron Hoeber (Philadelphia, PA)
- It Wasn’t Easy to Reach You, Daniel Meltz (New York, NY)
- Brutal Companion, Ruben Quesada (Chicago, IL)
- Woman, Counting, Marcela Sulak (Ramat Gan, Israel)
- Ready to Launch, Nikki Ummel (New Orleans, LA)
- Mammoth Life & Accident, Avra Wing (Brooklyn, NY)
The Hilary Tham Capital Collection (HTCC) features full-length collections from poets who volunteer to assist a literary organization or project.
Any literary nonprofit operating in America or Canada may nominate their volunteers to submit a poetry manuscript to the HTCC, an invitation-only judging process. Each nomination is good for two years, and poets can be nominated multiple times, as long as they continue to volunteer. (Organizations without nonprofit status may apply for permission to nominate a volunteer who has worked on a literary or literacy project that benefits the public without concern for financial profit.)
Nominees are invited to submit during the months of April and May. Past judges include Jericho Brown, Eduardo C. Corral, Denise Duhamel, Cornelius Eady, Kimiko Hahn, Michael Klein, Timothy Liu, and Maggie Smith. For more information about the HTCC, please contact series editor Brad Richard at richard.brad@gmail.com. Please visit wordworksbooks.org for more information about our other imprints.