Leanne Mumford — Touchstone Award for Individual Poems Winner

Leanne Mumford is the recipient of a Touchstone Award for Individual Poems published in 2019 for her poem

wind song
between boulders —
ochre handprints

published in Echidna Tracks 2.

Commentary from the Panel:

“Red and yellow ochre, vibrant and enduring pigments made from iron oxide, have been used for all manner of decorative purposes throughout human history and prehistory. Ochre handprints, painted on cave walls and other stone surfaces, have been found all over the world and date back forty thousand years or more. Whatever the purposes of these paintings, whether socio-cultural or purely artistic, these handprints continue to affirm ‘I was here; we were here.’

“Wind song, stone, ancient ochre handprints. What is transitory, what is eternal, what is our place in it all. This is an expansive haiku (time and space, heart and mind) which also anchors us, via multiple senses, in the here and now.”

“This haiku takes me right out of space and time and then brings me back to focus on a single moment, a single life and its potential to create lasting effect. Conveys in three lines a sense that the universe goes as far in as out.”

See the complete list of winners of both Individual Poem Awards and Distinguished Books Awards in the Touchstone Archives.