{"id":1676,"date":"2023-06-12T14:58:50","date_gmt":"2023-06-12T18:58:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/privacy-technology-center\/?page_id=1676"},"modified":"2025-05-12T11:08:56","modified_gmt":"2025-05-12T15:08:56","slug":"watchword-prize","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/privacy-technology-center\/about-us\/watchword-prize\/","title":{"rendered":"The Watchword Prize"},"content":{"rendered":"

About the Contest:<\/strong><\/p>\n

At the Center on Privacy & Technology, we work to protect the privacy rights of all people, and to build the capacity of communities to resist mass surveillance. While we focus on pushing for change through law and policy, we know the power of art to illuminate, transform and move to action. Artists and poets have a deeply-rooted tradition of participation in movements for social change, and we want to help foster and inspire the production of new works of art that evoke and critique experiences and practices of surveillance.<\/p>\n

To that end, the Center on Privacy & Technology launched The Watchword Prize, a new poetry contest to provoke work on the theme of surveillance \u2013 speaking to the experience of watching or being placed under watch, the different lenses through which one sees and is seen by others, in both the intimate and public spheres of our lives.<\/p>\n

Winning poem and runner-up:<\/strong><\/p>\n

After combing through the many submissions, we are thrilled to announce the winning poem for the inaugural Watchword Prize is \u201cWatchman, What of the Night?\u201d by Michael Colonnese.<\/p>\n

Submissions were judged by acclaimed “poet of witness” and Georgetown University faculty member Carolyn Forch\u00e9 who had this to say about the winning poem.<\/p>\n

\u201cWatchman, What Of The Night,\u201d is a searing lyric-narrative meditation on manual labor, boredom, isolation, and hunger for meaning. It begins in the shadows of the plating room and ends in the shadow of earth turning slowly toward the sun, a vision of hope artfully set within the realization of the damage inflicted by the endurance of the solitude that comes of drudgery and political estrangement. The poet\u2019s precise diction, vivid imagery and mastery of tone is impressive, as is the poet\u2019s deft ear for the music of inner life.<\/p>\n

–<\/p>\n

Watchman, What of the Night?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

I remember making my way
\nthrough the shadows of the plating room,
\ninhaling the sweet-sour stench
\nof the acid-etch bath, and staring too long
\nat rows of black rubber gloves
\nthat hung like severed hands
\non wooden drying racks
\nwhere line workers had left them
\nafter finishing their shift.<\/p>\n

Hour after hour, night after night,
\nyear after year, I yearned
\nfor something more, always half-expecting
\nthe totally destructive,
\na meteor strike or a nuclear war,
\nbut nothing much happened
\nalthough sometimes huge rats
\nwould leap from the scrap drums
\nwhere they’d been attempting to digest
\nwet strands of steel wire,
\nand I’d shudder and curse,
\ndespising my own hungers.<\/p>\n

Between rounds, I’d try revising
\nmy poems or else listen
\nto the radio, to the oldies station
\nor some phone-in talk show,
\nbut the callers seldom had
\na political opinion
\nthat wasn’t sentimental or insane.
\nWorking in solitude
\nwas damaging me in ways
\nI didn’t understand then
\nalthough I kept trying to imagine
\nthe entire planet in shadow
\nbut turning slowly towards the sun.<\/p>\n

About Michael Colonnese<\/strong><\/span><\/em>\"\"
\nMichael Colonnese is the author of Sex and Death, I Suppose<\/em>, which he describes as a hard-boiled detective novel with a soft Jungian underbelly, of a chapbook, Temporary Agency<\/em>, and of a poetry collection, Double Feature<\/em>. His short fiction, creative nonfiction, essays, and poems have appeared in over sixty literary magazines and academic journals, large and small. He’s a retired university professor, and for many decades he served as the managing editor of Longleaf Press, a literary nonprofit. He currently lives in the mountains of western North Carolina, near Asheville.<\/p>\n

–<\/p>\n

Among the many finalists, Carolyn also selected a runner-up entry, \u201cVigil\u201d by Eleanor Stanford.<\/p>\n

Vigil<\/strong><\/p>\n

My son says the government can manufacture
\nrain. Can read the secrets in his brain. My son works
\nin June\u2019s yard, among her wilting peonies. June teaches him
\nthe names of what she calls \u201cthe undesirables.”
\nPurslane and lesser celandine.
\nThe first time the spirits came for him, my son
\nwas three. He flailed and screamed and clung to me. F\u00e1tima
\npeeled him from my body, whisper-sung to him
\nin Portuguese. Does God\u2019s pleasure consist in secrecy?
\nOn the sidewalk, I make a limp pile of undesireables,
\nCrouch between the gladiolus and the grass, listen
\nto Ram Dass telling me desire is a trap and
\nthe body is gross. Telling me the guru subsists on
\na single glass of milk a day. Since my lover has returned
\nto Istanbul, I am trying to convert
\nmy sexual energy into something finer\u2014silk
\nor breath or glowing text. The guru eats arsenic
\nand LSD, stays upright and unmoved as milkweed.
\nThe second time the spirits came, my son knew
\nhe could not resist. Seventeen years ago,
\nhe left my body. Starless, dark with milk.
\nDoes God\u2019s pleasure consist
\nin alchemy? On the porch of the old
\nstone house in Germantown, June
\nholds her fiddle atilt.<\/p>\n

About Eleanor Stanford<\/strong><\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Eleanor Stanford is the author of four books of poems, including most recently Blue Yodel<\/em>, forthcoming in 2024 from CarnegieMellon University Press. Her work<\/a> has appeared in Poetry, Ploughshares, The Harvard Review, The Iowa Review, and many others. She was a Fulbright Scholar to Brazil, and the recipient of a 2019 NEA grant in poetry. She lives in the Philadelphia area.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

–<\/p>\n

About the Judge:<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Carolyn Forch\u00e9 is an American poet, memoirist, translator, editor, teacher and human rights advocate whose work spans five decades, elaborating universal themes of private and collective human struggle for our specific historical moment. She is the author of five poetry collections, including most recently <\/span>In the Lateness of the World: Poems<\/span><\/i> (Penguin, 2020), and the editor of two anthologies featuring \u201cthe poetry of witness,\u201d a term she coined to describe the expressive practice of poets writing about, and from within, extreme social and political conditions such as war, incarceration and enslavement. Her memoir, <\/span>What You Have Heard Is True<\/span><\/i> (Penguin Random House, 2019), tells the story of her time in El Salvador and the impact of her experiences there on her life and writing. Forch\u00e9 has received numerous awards for her work, including a Guggenheim Foundation fellowship, the Hiroshima Foundation Award for Peace and Culture, the Lannan Award in Poetry, and the Academy of American Poets Fellowship for distinguished poetic achievement. In 2023, Forch\u00e9 was inducted into the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. Forch\u00e9 currently serves as Director of Readings and Talks at the Lannan Center for Poetry and Social Practice and is a University Professor of English at Georgetown University.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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