2025 Elinor Benedict Poetry Prize Winners Announced!

Congratulations to Aiden Heung and their peom “House for the Living,” winner of the 2025 Elinor Benedict Poetry Prize!

Judge Diane Seuss on the winning poem: “If only life / could be rebuilt the way a flame is conjured / from embers,” writes Aiden Heung, in this poem written from an immigrant’s experience of dissonance and exile. “Sometimes it is better to be trapped / in a known past, however treacherous,” they write, enacting, in a singular, free-verse column, a life composed of unremarkable details that nonetheless construct a composition of a hallucinatory estrangement: The Basilica near their apartment sends in “crisp bells / like the snapping of branches.” They return rented furniture “like taking the insides out of an animal.” Still, the speaker functions, pulling their body though the city, “a ventriloquist’s dummy,” as their partner turns away, lost in sorrow, the hair on his temples turning gray. I admire this poem for its clarity of vision and diction and for its rendering of an uprooted couple’s unresolved, mysterious liminality.

We’d also like to congratulate our honorable mentions:

America According to Lana Del Rey” by Adriana Beltrano

“Jamaica Pond” by Maslen Bode Ward

And our finalists:

"It's not that I doubt the moon landing, it's just that” by Katelyn Roth

"After Reading Psalm 42” by Alexander Duringer

"How to Hit your Step Count on the Hedonic Treadmill” by Jordan Hamel

"Paramecicum” by Rebecca Myers

"The Day After, It Rains” by Samuel Piccone

"More” by Kelsey Wiora

"When You Go Sledding” by Michele Lent Hirsch

Finally, we’d like to extend a heartfelt THANK YOU to all of this year’s contestants. Look for the winning poem in Issue 47 of Passages North! Happy reading!