Every year Washington Writers’ Publishing House, a literary co-op based in D.C., holds contests for residents of Maryland, Virginia, and Washington, D.C., selecting manuscripts in the categories of fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry for publication. In 2022, The Jean Feldman Poetry Prize was awarded to Baltimore’s Anthony Moll for their debut collection, You Cannot Save Here.
Growing out of the tradition of apocalyptic verse, Moll’s poems are rife with imagery that is at once familiar and unsettling. Their observations of alienation and collapse are juxtaposed with moments of intense intimacy, and the pervasive sense of doom is tempered by the beauty and power of the poems themselves. Though these poems show us the many ways in which our world verges on collapse, they also show the possibilities that may rise from the ashes.
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