The Garden Party Collective presents: Visual / Experimental Poetry Contest

Congratulations to our three winners for our third poetry contest (January 2026):

Sasha Smith
Blessing Omeiza Ojo
Melanie Hyo-In Han

"Boy with a poem (boustrophedon)"

GPC notes:

“Boy with a poem” is a masterpiece of formal skill and linguistic play. Each forward-written line propels the reader through electric scenes and haunting sentiments, while each reverse line forces the reader to stutter, to focus, to unscramble each image. We are forced to sit in the poem’s static as it unearths details of “A GROOVE OF WEEPING CHERRY TREES” or “A PARADE OF WHITE PHOSPOROUS” trapped as readers in a sensuous overwhelm. It’s glorious work and it’s saying something necessary. What else could you ask of a poem?

photo credit: Marcus Jackson

Sasha Smith is a Jamaican-American Bronxite poet currently living in New York City. Sasha is a 2024 Cave Canem fellow. She has an MFA in Poetry from Cornell University and holds degrees from New York University and CUNY. Previous work has been published in Black Warrior Review, The Southampton Review, Columbia Journal, Poet’s Country, Action Spectacle and Tupelo Quarterly. Sasha was a recipient of the 2016 Poetry Project’s Emerge-Surface-Be Fellowship.

instagram: @stesseract_

https://stesseract.com/

"Churchyard Service"

churchyard. churchyard. churchyard. churchyard. churchyard. churchyard.
churchyard. church-yard. with you, I choose to stand churchyard. church.
churchyard. churchyard. at the threshold of God’s tent. churchyard. yard.
churchyard. churchyard. we are to worship here church-yard. churchyard.
churchyard. churchyard. without fear of slings church-yard. churchyard.
churchyard. churchyard. synching with hosanna. churchyard. churchyard.
churchyard. churchyard. this grave melody should be mourn-less. churchy.
churchyard. in quick time, the procession of bullet begins. churchyard.
churchyard. church-yard. a congregation falls to the ground. church-yard.
churchyard. & man resembles a mere breath. it flickers. churchyard. yard.
churchyard. churchyard. it wiggles its low waist. raises a hymn churchyard.
churchyard. yard. from the dead testament. isn’t this a wonder? churchy.
churchyard. o wonderous wonder. i have come for the miracle churchyard.
churchyard. the shape of an apple, a venom in itself churchyard. churchyard.
churchyard. that lames the sea. that stings a bee. churchyard. churchyard.
churchyard. for the order that birth the psyche: churchyard. churchyard.
churchyard. churchyard angels ascend to God in squad yard. churchyard.
churchyard. churchyard. drifting a happy song churchyard. church-yard.
churchyard. churchyard. into wreckage churchyard. churchyard. churchyard.
churchyard. churchyard. churchyard. churchyard. churchyard. churchyard.

GPC notes:

The bolded meat of this poem is fenced in by the repeating “churchyard service” refrain, at once invoking a sense of confinement and bursting through. The speaker chooses to “stand churchyard. church. / churchyard. churchyard. at the threshold of God’s tent,” inviting us in as gorgeous, unexpected lines cascade down the piece’s interior. A “man resembles a mere breath.” As readers, we witness with the speaker a “wonderous wonder,” we exit the piece having travelled somewhere ephemeral and trapped in lyrical amber.

Blessing Omeiza Ojo is a Nigerian poet based in Abuja, where he spends most of his time teaching creative writing, crafting poetry, and guiding children to literary and art festivals. His poems have appeared in Frontier Poetry, The Shallow Tales, Cọ́n-scìò, The Poetry NND Column, The Deadlands, and elsewhere. He is the coordinator of the Hill-Top Creative Arts Foundation, Abuja. He is the recipient of the 9th Korea-Nigeria Poetry Prize (Ambassador Special Prize), the 2024 Eugenia Abu/Sevhage International Prize for Creative Nonfiction, and the 2025 Golden Award for Art Administrators.

instagram: @ink_spiller_1

twitter: @Blessing_O_Ojo

"쌍커풀 (Double Eyelids)"

GPC notes:

Melanie Hyo-In Han’s "쌍커풀 (Double Eyelids)" explores the nuances of cultural beauty standards, all the while mirroring the physical and emotional crease of the eyelid. This poem traces the speaker’s childhood resentment toward her body, longing to be "lucky" like her mother. We love the way this yearning finds its way finally in the end--the highlighted irony of familial inheritance.

Born in Korea and raised in East Africa, Melanie Hyo-In Han is a poet, translator, and PhD candidate in Creative Writing. She holds an MFA in Poetry and Translation and is the author of My Dear Yeast and three chapbooks, as well as the translator of several collections of Spanish poetry. Her work has been supported by fellowships from Sundress Academy for the Arts, Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, Kees Eijrond Foundation, Gladstone's Library, and elsewhere. Currently, she is the Co-Editor-in-Chief of Flora Fiction and Two Languages Prize Editor at Gasher Press. Learn more at melaniehan.com.

instagram: @melhan

Contest Guidelines & Finalists

For our January 2026 contest, collective member Mya Matteo Alexice selected "Visual / Experimental Poetry":

"While the left-aligned, form-adherent, steady poem is one we of course love and cherish, poetry is, definitionally as a genre, expansive. So, give us your weird creatures bursting out of the traditional. Give us your poems with images, with sounds, with drawings, with music notation, with calligraphy, with collage, with source material, with strangeness, with shapes we’ve never seen before, with avant-garde magic.Think Douglas Kearney. Think Olio. Think Steve McCaffery. Think Whereas. Think Citizen. Think of something unlike anything else we’ve seen before."

congratulations to our finalists!