Chuck Brickley — Touchstone Distinguished Books Award 2025
Chuck Brickley is the recipient of a Touchstone Distinguished Books Award for 2025 for the volume, downhill home. (Ormskirk, UK: Shapshot Press, 2025).
Commentary from the Panel:
Chuck Brickley’s long-awaited new collection downhill home (Snapshot Press) stood out to the panel immediately. Varied in technique and subject matter yet maintaining a distinctive voice throughout, this full-length work demonstrates that the medium of one-breath poetry is still rich with creative possibilities.
Throughout the book, Brickley effectively matches structure and subject matter:
half our state away
and yet the wipers swish
ash es
ash es
dawn a needle in the last hopscotch square
Old Glory
waving like there’s no
Without being heavy-handed, Brickley includes poems with a poignant social consciousness:
alley frost
except
where he slept
city tents
a pitbull wags
what’s left
pausing
at the railing where he jumped
sunlight on the bay
He also finds a way to give a strong sense of time and place to even the quiet pieces:
sunken hardhat
a few minnows resting
from the current
a fogbow
at the end
my hometown
just one more cartwheel the Milky Way
The nostalgia at the heart of this collection is conveyed with skill delicate and potent enough to leave readers reminiscing about things they never directly experienced. downhill home is a remarkable achievement and deeply worthy of this Touchstone Award!
Bruce H. Feingold
Distinguished Books Coordinator
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See the complete list of winners of both Individual Poem Awards and Distinguished Books Awards in the Touchstone Archives.
Comments (12)
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Great book! Well worth the purchase and happy to have it in my collection. Congratulations!
I, too, was excitedly anticipating the release of this book. It doesn’t disappoint and is well deserving of a Touchstone!
Thank you, Kat. I’m so glad it “doesn’t disappoint!” ;-) As you know, I’m a big fan of your Touchstone-winning collection!
Well, Chuck, you know I’m a big fan of your work, so the excitement was pretty high while waiting to read this collection! :) It’s a favorite and a touchstone (!), along with earthshine!
Howdy… I am associate editor over at re:Virals here at THF. Joyce Clement’s haiku was selected for commentary at re:Virals this week, and so I am trying to get in touch with her to advise her and ask for her comment. Hoping you can forward this on and ask her to reach out to me via email asap. Thanks!
And congrats to Mr. Brickley!
Hi Susan,
I’m guessing Christopher Patchel will have her email as they were co-editors at Frogpond.
Also you could do a phone search for her land address:
168 Old Turnpike Road,. Bristol, CT 06010
Thank you, Ms. Yavaniski!
.
shellmound
all the stars
we can’t see anymore
shell mound, in anthropology, prehistoric refuse heap, or mound, consisting chiefly of the shells of edible mollusks intermingled with evidence of human occupancy.
Shell mound | Native American, Prehistoric & Archaeology
Of course in the last few years there are other shell mounds, in various places as war makes money. The planet almost as pockmarked as the far side of the moon alas.
.
And the horrific practice and support of selling guns to youngsters with little social awareness, training, or chance to develop empathy exemplified in this haikai verse:
New Year’s morning
not one child
has shot another
Haikai verses have a place because they were born of war starting with the anti-war Japanese haiku poets:
https://thehaikufoundation.org/juxta/juxta-1-1/forgive-but-do-not-forget-modern-haiku-and-totalitarianism/
And never before since WWII has there been a need for the spirit of those resistance poets!
i.m.
Shimada Seihô (1882-1944) who died from his torture treatment by the feared Japanese secret police of the time:
https://area17.blogspot.com/2013/07/the-g-force-of-blue-touching-base-with.html
Thank you Chuck for bringing out another of your books!
Alan, your thoughtful discussion of my work is most appreciated. A few further thoughts on “shellmound”:
To Patrick Orozco, headman of the Pajaro Valley Ohlone Indian Council, the shellmound is not just another archaeological site. “People forget the meaning of spirituality, of respect. They look at this with scientific interest, as if it’s about dinosaurs.” For this reason, many Indigenous texts have replaced the term ‘midden,’ which implies these mounds are simply kitchen garbage cans, with “shellmound,” or “shell mound.”
Ella Rodriguez, who has worked to preserve Ohlone sites for over twenty years: “To the Europeans, it’s a garbage dump. To the Native Americans, it’s not. It was traditional to the Native Americans to bury their people in the shells. It was like giving back to the earth what they had taken. It would avoid disturbance by animals who would smell the old sea shells.”
Kim and I hike to an Ohlone shellmound on San Bruno Mountain several times a year to meditate on our karmic history. Its surface is covered with tiny flecks of broken mollusk shells, not unlike the stars beyond our urban light pollution.
Again, Alan, grateful for your response.
Hi Chuck,
It’s a sad state of affairs that shells bring to mind the horrifically evil shelling of babies, mothers, other non-combatants.
Yes, default to be respect and spirituality first and foremost. And yes ‘midden’ is a truly awful term, and now as we see all original peoples knew so much more than we did, never cutting the branch that they are sitting upon, we should all revere or at least deeply respect them all.
The universe is also expanding, at some point in the far future there will be no stars to the naked eye, not because we bombed ourselves off the planet, just natural causes instead of “death-smoke” [sic] from war crimes.
“mollusk shells not unlike the stars” is a lovely line too!
deep bow,
Alan
Love Chuck’s book! Congratulations!
Why, thank you, dear Terri. And congratulations for the Touchstone success of your book. Love it!