Life Lessons
With the 2026 Magpie Award for Poetry opening for entries next week, we thought a throwback to the winner of the inaugural Magpie Award, ‘Big Red Schoolhouse’ by Ace Baker was in order. You can read the full poem, along with the other 2014 Magpie Award honorees as chosen by George McWhirter in Pulp Literature Issue 4, Autumn 2014, on sale now till March 15th!
Big Red Schoolhouse
Ace Baker
I was fresh from university,
and my uncle said I had to listen
to the land to get what it would teach me,
that the barn was a big red schoolhouse if I was
a willing student, and what I didn’t get then,
I remember now,
the slaughter in winter, back when zero and below
made sure carcasses would not rot,
how we herded cattle single file
like school kids to assembly,
back when zero and below made metal runs bone cold, and
I remember
making my way in winter, in zero and below,
to the front of that line, with my uncle, Sid,
him smashing that hammer hard between the eyes,
when zero and below could anesthetize, and
I remember
lifting the back legs high in winter,
back in zero and below, before plunging,
bone deep, too deep, just above breastbone,
cutting high above backbone,
and severing arteries, bleeding her out,
when zero and below made all that blood run too, too slow
Read the rest of the poem, as well as Ace’s award-winning story, ‘Victory Girl’, in Issue 4, Autumn 2014 …
These contests were judged blind, so our judges had no idea Ace Baker’s story ‘Victory Girl’ was scheduled for the same issue. The fact his poem landed in first place is not just a stroke of synchronicity, but a testament to his talent for both prose and poetry.
Says Ace about the poem, “It was by reading Patrick Lane’s poetry that I discovered how powerful images could be. ‘Because I Never Learned’ showed me how something could be ugly and beautiful at the same time, and I tried to replicate that feeling with the experience I chose to relate in ‘Big Red Schoolhouse’.”
Ace Baker has won the Magpie Poetry Award, the PNWA Poetry Prize, the SIWC Poetry Contest, and the Storyteller Award for Short Fiction. He maintains a website at www.fighttowrite.com.
Got an award-winning poem in you? The 2026 Magpie Award for Poetry opens March 1st!
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