Announcing Zócalo’s Sixth Annual Poetry Prize Winner

Congratulations to Matt Sumpter, the Author of ‘No World,’ This Year’s Best Poem About Place

Zócalo Public Square’s daily ideas journalism and free public events aim to shed light on critical issues that explore our shared human condition and ask questions about how we navigate the world we’ve made. We publish a new poem each Friday in the same spirit, and for the last six years, it’s why we’ve awarded a prize to the poem that best evokes a connection to place.

This year, 417 poets submitted a total of 979 poems, transporting us to the San Gabriel Valley, the Blue Ridge, and the Salton Sea …