Escarpment Prize for Poetry 2025 - Winner

The editors of Avalon Park Press are pleased to announce the winner of the inaugural Escarpment Prize for Poetry:

After the Anthropocene

by Jordan Wyberneit

After the Anthropocene invites readers to a fantasy and a future, a mythos of systemic sentience and radical agency. Spanning linear time from inception of the universe to the Anthropocene, this work invites readers into the language and intellects of the non-human and the hominid. This work explores themes of identity, self-determination, sentiency, consent, agency, capitalism, entitlement, colonization, waste, and offers a perspective on humanness.

Jordan Wyberneit is low-key feral, gently heathen, & wildly autistic. She whispers 'I love you' to hummingbirds and hornworms. Her work centers on systems of life, hybrid identities, and the complications that inform modern human experiences. She holds an MFA in Poetry from Regis University and MS in Data Analytics from Colorado State University. She values justice, mercy, humility, kindness, and grace.

This collection of poetry will be published in early 2026. The editors would like to thank all the poets that submitted their works for review.