The Winner of the 2013 Ballard Poetry Prize is Seven Times to Leave

We are pleased to announce the winner of our annual poetry contest: Jeannette Angell's Seven Times to Leave.

Jeannette Angell is an award-winning author and playwright whose work has been translated into twelve languages and has appeared in fifteen countries. She is also a survivor of intimate-partner abuse and volunteers with an agency providing services to victims of sexual assault and domestic abuse on the Cape.

Our finalist judge was Fred Marchant, poet, professor, and Director of Creative Writing at Suffolk University. He was the 2009 co-winner of the May Sarton Award from the New England Poetry Club, given to poets whose “work is an inspiration to other poets," and his most recent book of poetry, The Looking House, was named by Barnes and Noble Review and the San Francisco Chronicle as one of the best books of poetry in 2009.

Marchant said he particularly appreciated that Seven Times to Leave "presents us with survivors’ tales, stories that teach us the strength of mind and courage of soul that the recovery from such trauma requires."

"These unflinching, brave poems remind us that above all we must keep alive our capacity to love, or else we die somewhere deep within," Marchant said.

Seven Times to Leave will be released in print and as a digital edition on March 19, 2013.