“Writing Woman” by Elizabeth Bolton

Third prize poetry winner of the Hart House Literary Contest in 2020 was Elizabeth Bolton, a PhD from the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at U of T.

This is what the judges – poets Prathna Lor, Kate Cayley and Ingrid Ruthig – said about Bolton’s poem:

“While building meaning through structure, language, and the sounds and images of lines like ‘the nighttime grocery’s flicker-lit linoleum’, ‘Writing Woman’ also retains mystery. Incantatory, ‘the wound’ morphs from object to persona, leaving us to contemplate the weight of truth.”