Announcing the winners of the Kierkegaard Poetry Competition

We are pleased to announce the winners of the Søren Kierkegaard Poetry Competition, having received several hundred submissions for the contest.

Congratulations to first-place winner Hugh Savage for his poem “The Wreck of the København” and to Paul J. Pastor for his second-place poem “That Which Cannot Rest Content.” We’d also like to congratulate our four third-place winners: Jesse Keith Butler for his poem “Lightning Strikes Churches,” Nadine Ellsworth-Moran for her poem “Stealing Figs While on Holiday in Greece,” Fr. Stephen A. Gregg for his poem “Two-Step,” and Matthew Salyer for his poem “From the Papers of One Still Living.”

The award is for a poem of not more than fifty lines inspired by the writings of Søren Kierkegaard to be published in an anthology in honor of Rev. Ronald F. Marshall (1948-2021) who served as pastor at First Lutheran Church of West Seattle and taught theology at NW Theological Union. Marshall was a prolific reader and brilliant teacher, known for his community activism on behalf of the hungry and homeless. He also a published two major books on Søren Kierkegaard: Kierkegaard for the Church and Kierkegaard in the Pulpit: Sermons Inspired by His Writings.

All of the winning poems, as well as 34 others which were accepted for inclusion in the anthology, will be published in anthology from Wiseblood Books, in collaboration with the MFA in Creative Writing at the University of Saint Thomas in Houston and sponsored by Music Northwest.

We’d like to thank Dappled Things for organizing the contest and we’d also like to thank everyone who submitted a poem. We look forward to sharing the published anthology soon.

Dana Gioia and Mary Grace Mangano
Contest Judges

About Our Winners:

Hugh Savage's poems were first published in Poetry in 1993 and, most recently (Spring 2022), in Euphony. A native of Pittsburgh, he has lived in New York City, Cairo, and Paris. He now makes his home in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia.

Paul J. Pastor’s debut poetry collection is Bower Lodge and his poems have also been published in The Windhover, Ekstasis, Solum Literary Press, North American Anglican, among others, and has been anthologized by the New York Quarterly Review. He is a candidate in poetry in the MFA program at the University of St. Thomas, Houston.

Jesse Keith Butler’s poems are published or forthcoming in Ekstasis Magazine, The Orchards Poetry Journal, Better Than Starbucks, and Cloud Lake Literary. He has also been a frequent contributor at Darkly Bright Press, a small press specializing in the intersection of literature and liturgical Christianity.

Nadine Ellsworth-Moran lives in Georgia where she serves full time in ministry. Her essays and poems have appeared in Interpretation, Ekstasis, Thimble, Emrys, Structo, Kakalak, and Sonic Boom, among others. 

Fr. Stephen A. Gregg, OCist. is Cistercian monk in Dallas, Texas, where he is also a professor of English at the University of Dallas and a teacher in the monastery’s high school. His doctorate is in the poetry of Edmund Spenser, but his theological studies centered on the early Church Fathers and St. Augustine.

Matthew Salyer is the author of a chapbook, Lambkin, and a full-length collection, Ravage & Snare. His work has appeared in journals such as Narrative, Beloit Poetry Journal, Poetry Northwest, The Common, Hunger Mountain, The Massachusetts Review, and others. He is a Pushcart nominee, a two-time finalist for the Iowa Review Prize in Poetry, and a semifinalist for the Brittingham and Felix Pollak Prizes in Poetry. He works as an Associate Professor of English at West Point.