A Poetry Box Chapbook Prize Selection – 1st Place

Shrinking Bones by Judy K. Mosher is the first place winner of The Poetry Box Chapbook Prize for 2018. These poems grew from the author’s journey with her aging mother and her memory of her past paid work-life as a professor of anatomy and physiology. The collection is a rich marriage of poetic observation joined with an in-depth understanding of the human body. It portrays a beautiful story of love, loss and grief, as well as the complex relationship between mother and daughter.

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Mosher has invoked the metaphor of the bones of the body to describe the gentle path to the end. Her mastery, the metaphor and the simplicity of the poems focus a unique light on the journey. Lee Firestone Dunne, poet/author Life in the Poorhouse and Cocktail Shaker

Judy Mosher has done a masterful job of bringing anatomy and poetry together in a way that enhances the understanding of both. An enlightening collection! Miriam Sagan, poet

Mosher skillfully juxtaposes each poem with a description of bones - fingertips, ossicles, orbits, even a phantom limb - to build a framework of tender poems that detail how her mother cared for her, mellowed as time passed, even what made her mother laugh. Tricia Knoll, author of Broadfork Farmand How I Learned To Be White