Note from the Editor: Mike Bove, Spring 2026

In my part of the world, February is still deep winter. It's cold out. There’s snow outside my window. Depending on the day, my driveway is coated in either ice or salt dust, and making the quick dash to the mailbox and back still requires a coat. Sometimes a hat too. And yet, here’s the Spring 2026 issue of Hole in the Head Review. We’re calling it the spring issue in the name of coming warmth, in the name of increasing daylight, and in the name of hope.

Speaking of light, we’ve paired this issue’s poems with María DeGuzmán’s luminous crystal photographs from the series “Quartz Secrets”. The images are bright celebrations of attentive looking, just like the poems we’ve collected here from gifted writers far and wide.

We’re also thrilled to include the winners of the 2025 Charles Simic Poetry Prize:

Winner: Olivia Jacobson

Runners-Up: Mary Buchinger and Tricia Knoll

Of these poems, this year’s judge Bill Schulz says:

First, congratulations to Olivia Jacobson, the winner of the third annual Charles

Simic Poetry Prize and to each of the finalists.

I read and reread each poem many times before selecting Photograph of My Father,

Age Seven. The poem is a quick 19 lines and few words. It's deceptively simple and

powerful– each word, each line moves the poem forward, from the commonplace to

hesitancy, fear and eventually to a cautious, hesitant hope. 

I am especially grateful to Mary Buchinger and Tricia Knoll. Your poems have stayed

with me.

Thank you to the editors for sending along such a strong group of finalists. You

made my task difficult in the best kind of way. Charlie believed in and respected the

importance of each word in a poem. I think he'd admire this year's submissions.

This year’s Editor’s Choice is awarded to Joanna Young’s poem Dark Rooms, a piece that struck me with it’s clear, thematic use of darkness to bring forth the visible, bad or good, that surrounds us all.

We hope you enjoy our Spring 2026 issue. Here’s to the light.

Mike Bove, Editor