Announcing the 2026 Neahkahnie Mountain Poetry Prize: Awarded Poems & Poets
The Writing Program is pleased to announce the top three awarded poems and poets for the annual poetry prize contest, as well as poems that have received honorable mention.
We received a record number of submissions between January 15 - February 15 from poets with ties to our North Coast community. Our judge for 2026 was David J. S. Pickering. A native of Tillamook County, David is the author of Jesus Comes to Me as Judy Garland, winner of the 2020 Airlie Prize. His work has appeared in numerous literary journals, with several poems nominated for the Pushcart Prize.
Thank you to all who submitted poetry for this year’s contest!
Awarded Poems:
1st Place: "In the Woods" by Stephen Quinn
2nd Place: "Within Reach" by Susan Eliot
3rd Place: "A Landscape No Longer Mine" by Phyllis Mannan
Honorable Mentions on display in the Wonder Garden May-Septebember 2026:
"Preparing for Surgery" by Kiersta Fricke-Gostnell (May)
"Remission: The First Outpatient Procedure" by Asher Finch (June)
"Fur Breakfast" by Willa Schneberg (July)
"Eulogy for M. Lagerfeld" by Merridawn Duckler (August)
"equinox" by Deborah Akers (September)
In the Woods
by Stephen Quinn
1.
Is there a difference between the woods and me,
between rainstorm and laughter, bark and skin,
this flickering light and the beating of my heart?
There are things I can touch, things that touch me;
in their reflecting echo is where I find myself lost.
Follow the crooked path down—I’ll be here.
2.
The forest knows me:
passing shadow, fallen branch,
dandelion, bending.
I recall: lightfall
that cast me, storm that loosed me,
wind that lifts me, seeding.
Stump to ridge: detail
and scope, exceeding the grasp
of an old hand, reaching.
3.
Light embraces stone. Stone creates shadow.
Shadow shelters rain. Water holds the light.
Everything I see moves in a circle,
never around me, or because of me.
Down the crooked path, this is where I’ll be.
Within Reach
by Susan Eliot
A ‘found’ poem excerpted from Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver
I could hear the cackly gossip of some
crows outside, making their deals
on the roof somewhere.
A rope swing dangled above the roar,
suggesting happier times where this was a place
to swim. Now you wouldn’t wish it on your dirty clothes.
The clouds bellied up since morning;
the crows scrubbing the reachable branch off their tree.
Hundreds of people passed by outside
hugging their coats around them,
looking at their feet, walking fast.
Maybe because it was Sunday, with the Godly
in church--on butt-polished wood benches and
colored glass windows like jigsaw puzzles
of people and sheep--and the rest sleeping off their sins.
The only words we had between us now
were the foreplay to fighting.
Love has to come from
a strong place, not just
grabbing whatever’s in reach.
Whatever I love about you I get
to live with. And the other stuff,
I live with that too.
A Landscape No Longer Mine
by Phyllis Mannan
1
Six months before we moved, I gazed
from my upstairs window through the tunnel
of trees to the beach two blocks away,
sky and water white with morning haze.
We say, “In the fullness of time,” such-and-such
will happen. We will leave when the time
is right, I thought, as though leaving
had nothing to do with me.
All those years I walked, carefree,
to the beach, then north or south, I knew
the path could shrink. I didn’t know
how hard the ground would be.
2
As I walk the path to the birch tree
behind our Portland home, the ground softens
underfoot, becomes the trail through dune grass
from Ocean Road onto Manzanita Beach.
A dry stream bed of river rock turns
into wet shoreline. Bark dust in the azalea beds
into wave prints—beach cusps—at ocean’s edge.
A neighbor’s fence-top into the far horizon.
Poet Bios
Steve Quinn - 1st Place Poem
“In the Woods”
Steve Quinn is a retired college professor and instructional designer who lives with his wife, Ann, on two soggy acres along the Oregon Coast. He has been writing for as long as he can remember. During his years of teaching, he wrote textbooks and journal articles, patiently honing the bad habits of academic writing. In 2022 he earned his MFA in creative writing from Pacific University, which inspired him to start on a new collection of rejection letters. Since retiring to the coast, Steve and Ann have planted over 250 trees on their property, Steve continues to write and share fiction and memoir as well as poetry, and he maintains an active correspondence with their 13-year-old granddaughter in Washington DC, who also is a writer. Steve is grateful anytime he can help something spread its roots and stand on its own.
Susan Eliot - 2nd Place Poem
“Within Reach”
Susan Eliot is a collage artist who also loves to 'collage' poems from the literature she reads, or what some call “found poems”. Retirement two years ago allowed Susan to become a permanent resident of Gearhart, a sweet and quiet community that nurtures her soul.
Phyllis Mannan - 3rd Place Poem
“A Landscape No Longer Mine”
Phyllis Mannan recently moved to Beaverton from Manzanita, Oregon. She has published a poetry chapbook, Bitterbrush (Finishing Line Press). Her poems have appeared in Cirque, Cloudbank, North Coast Squid, The Oregonian, Willawaw Journal, and elsewhere. Work is forthcoming in the anthology Campfire Stories: The Oregon Coast by Mountaineers Books.