2026 Musical Ekphrastic Poetry Honorable Mentions
2026 Musical Ekphrastic Poetry Contest Honorable Mentions
Touchstone is happy to recognize these excellent contributions to the 2026 contest based on music from Ravel’s Miroirs.
Honorable Mentions
Veronica Tucker
Joan T. Doran
Libby Maxey
Hannah Dutton
You can read these excellent poems and hear the music they were based upon below.
We will be reading these poems and celebrating the collaboration between poetry and music at Spring Hill Studio on October 18 at 3PM:
https://psnh.org/events/october-18-music-and-poetry-at-spring-hill-studio/
Honorable Mention
Joan T. Doran
Joan T. Doran writes poetry from a high ridge overlooking New Hampshire’s Mount Sunapee. Founder of the Center For thye Arts’ Literary Arts Guild, she is a member of the John Hay Poetry Society, the Inkwell Writers’ Alliance, the Poetry Society of New Hampshire, and other writers’ groups, and is and author of “Herding Mice at Three A.M.”, a book of poetry. She her daughter herd two cats.
1. “Noctuelles” (“Night Moths”) – Dedicated to Léon-Paul Fargue, Noctuelles is a highly chromatic work, maintaining a dark, nocturnal mood throughout. The middle section is calm with rich, chordal melodies, and the recapitulation takes place a fifth below the first entry.
Honorable Mention
Hannah Dutton
Hannah Dutton (she/her) is a New Hampshire based poet and artist. She was the president of Plymouth State University’s Poets and Writers as well as editor of that literary magazine, Centripetal. She is a member of the 2026 Slam Free or Die poetry Team. Her work has appeared in “Centripetal”, “Livina Poetry”, “Hearth and Coffin” and “The People’s Poetry NH”.
1. “Noctuelles” (“Night Moths”) – Dedicated to Léon-Paul Fargue, Noctuelles is a highly chromatic work, maintaining a dark, nocturnal mood throughout. The middle section is calm with rich, chordal melodies, and the recapitulation takes place a fifth below the first entry.
Honorable Mention
Libby Maxey
Libby Maxey is a senior editor at Literary Mama and the author of both a chapbook (Kairos, 2019) and a full-length poetry collection (Indwelling, 2024). Her work has appeared in Crannóg, The Comstock Review, and elsewhere. She is a winner of the Princemere Poetry Prize, the Helen Schaible International Sonnet Contest, and Finishing Line Press’s New Women’s Voices contest. Her nonliterary activities include singing classical repertoire and method ringing on tower bells.
5. “La vallée des cloches” (“The Valley of Bells”) – Dedicated to Maurice Delage, the piece evokes the sounds of various bells through its use of sonorous harmonies.
Honorable Mention
Veronica Tucker
Veronica Tucker is an emergency medicine and addiction medicine physician, writer, mother of three, and lifelong New Englander. She is the author of the chapbook The House as Witness (Quillkeepers Press, 2026). Her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net and appears in Best Microfiction 2026, The Offing, ONE ART, Rust & Moth, and elsewhere. She lives in New Hampshire with her family.
5. “La vallée des cloches” (“The Valley of Bells”) – Dedicated to Maurice Delage, the piece evokes the sounds of various bells through its use of sonorous harmonies.
Instead of writing about the literal imagery suggested by La vallée des cloches, I found myself thinking about what it feels like to listen. As an emergency physician, the sounds of a hospital have become their own kind of bells over the years. This poem grew from that connection between Ravel’s music and the quiet rhythms of a night shift.