Jessica Baker ’09, of Bristow, Va., was named winner of the 2007 Academy of American Poets Prize. The annual poetry contest recognizes one poet from all participating colleges and universities.

At Sweet Briar College, the award also is known as the Jean Taylor Memorial Poetry Prize.

Janet Sylvester, poet and SBC assistant professor of English, announced the winner on March 19. “These awards, particularly at the undergraduate level, are a meaningful part of the conversation between the professional poetry world and students who might not otherwise have direct contact, beyond their own teachers, with that world,” she said.

Debra Nystrom, an associate professor in the University of Virginia’s creative writing program, judged the contest and was impressed with Baker’s work.

“Though there are, among the other contest entries, poems rich with vivid detail, poems whose turns of thought and of syntax afford sudden startling insights, and poems whose music offers delight, this is the one submission whose poems affect a reader in all of those ways at once,” she wrote.

“This writer engages a reader’s senses thoroughly, and conjures up, in the three poems, three very different atmospheres that each strike a fine balance between mystery and clarity. ‘Red Dress’ is the most accomplished and moving poem of the entire batch, with its truly felt tension between containment and release of emotion.”

Jessica BakerWhen asked if “Red Dress” was born of personal experience, Baker shrugged and said, “Not specifically. I have a red dress; that’s about it. [It’s about] the feeling of being all dressed up and then going back to normal.”

Baker, an English and creative writing major at Sweet Briar, has written poetry on and off for as long as she can remember. “I’ve just kind of always done it,” she said. “It just got better recently.”

For winning, Baker will receive a monetary award from the Academy and a one- year membership to the Academy of American Poets.

Red Dress

You untie the red dress and push
against the strings that held you in.
As you start to pull it up
over your head, you name the thick
slow feeling that you’re wading through.
As you repeat it to yourself,
you choke inside the dark
tunnel of fabric, you close your eyes
against the burn of tears that run down
your cheeks like bad liquor runs down
your throat. This is the cry
of one who has bottled up the ocean
without realizing it. You pull the dress
off and force your eyes to open
to florescent bathroom lights
that burn as much as tears do. Breathe,

Breathe, stop shaking and stand,
you command yourself, breathe
and hang the red dress back up and cover it
in plastic so you cannot smell the perfume
that reminds you of kisses given,
and received, while dancing. Breathe
and forget it, dress in old, loose cotton,
wash the burn away with saltless water,
gather up your burden, and unlock the door.

— By Suzanne Ramsey, SBC staff writer