Winner of the 2020 Hopper Poetry Prize, Elsa Johnson's book of poetry, The Wind Speaks, is now available from Green Writers Press.

What would you get if a Taoist monk sat down with Wendell Berry, Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Sappho, and G.M. Hopkins to write sonnets that banish conventions of form, structure, & meter, while creating new parameters within which to start, stop, surge, yield, twist, turn, open, close.

These poems beg to be spoken aloud; each finds a singular cadence, tension, perspective, to bring to the natural world fresh and sometimes unusual voices (a poem in the voice of a praying mantis? . . . vulture? . . . whippoorwill?)

Bit by bit, they work from the observed and/or fantasized, to get to the internal, the personal, to a celebratory grief.

THE HOPPER POETRY PRIZE

OCTOBER 2020

We are pleased to announce that Elsa Johnson is the winner of The Hopper Poetry Prize for her manuscript The Wind Speaks.

The Wind Speaks by Elsa Johnson dazzles with audacity; the poems “spread/take up space/crowd/sprawl” across the page with their field form and deliberate spaces, asking readers to pause and take in the abundant life surrounding us while also considering the poignancy of loss and the mortality of all living things. Beginning with the energetic litany of “Testimony,” each poem explores “all   nature’s children/innocents   living obedient to their calling” with precise observation and intimacy, urging “let me be present   Here   :    Let me be    now.” A collection of poems “in love with the world,” the language here offers visual and sonic landscapes, welcoming us into these sometimes unexpected speakers’ worlds, such as the vulture and lady mantis, while also maintaining a delightful sense of mystery.

—Lisa Kwong 

Elsa Johnson is anchored by nature. As an undergraduate she studied poetry with Fred Eckman at Bowling Green State University. She continued her studies at Indiana University at Bloomington; she subsequently studied landscape architecture at Ohio State University and has been making gardens for people ever since. She is deeply involved locally in very hands-on environmental activism. A few years ago, she was restored to poetry through friendship with poet Sarah Gridley, who became her late-life poet-guide and mentor, and to whom she is deeply grateful. Enjoy a poem from The Wind Speaks below.
 

Moonstuck

It feels long as a season                               these dark hours of
night      --       these dry hours         when sleep almost enters
the room but then                                     both eager and afraid
trembling               pulled by               anticipation’s              tide
dithers in the door                           Sleep’s pulled by the moon
this way    then that                    Restless      the moon’s power
stirs the sap of all women                                              waxing in
our tidal blood    that men don’t share                                Even
as we grow white    and dry      it holds sway     --       enthralls
strengthens                              Awake at midnight     we read   :
at two        eat cheese     with crackers      :        at four     think
there is a poem in this             somewhere                Tomorrow
we sisterhood of blood will say                                           It was
a full moon         a night season                     We couldn’t sleep