DEGREES OF ROMANCE by Peter Krumbach
Elixir Press, January 2023

DEGREES OF ROMANCE by Peter Krumbach won the 2022 Elixir Press Antivenom Poetry Award. As contest judge Candice Reffe describes the book, these dazzling prose poems are a portal into “a realm where some great secret is to be divulged, the gate to what’s been sought but never found briefly ajar.” Enter. Details of ordinary life—the scraping of a spoon, the “fat blue mailbox bolted to a sidewalk”—shimmer like auras the poet reads in the world around us. Part observation, part divination, the poems send messages in invisible ink that appear when you tip them to the sun, the dispatch you’ve been waiting for.

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When Your Sky Runs Into Mine by Rooja Mohassessy
Elixir Press, February 2023

When Your Sky Runs Into Mine by Rooja Mohassessy is the winner of the 22nd Annual Elixir Press Poetry Award. Shara McCallum had this to say about it: “Rooja Mohassessy’s debut collection belies any notion of a first book. It is a work of expansive vision and formal achievement, sounding an assured and unforgettable voice in poetry. Ekphrasis is at the core of Mohassessy’s poetics, resplendent in her responses to works of visual art and in the richly textured images she creates with intricate diction and syntax.” Mohassessy is an Iranian-born poet. She is a 2022 MacDowell Fellow and a student of the Pacific University MFA program in Oregon. Having published broadly in numerous literary magazines, this is her debut collection.

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