OnMilwaukee.com is pleased to announce that Susan Firer and Kate Kliner are the winners of the Third Annual Milwaukee Poetry Contest.

Firer, an adjunct assistant professor and senior lecturer at UWM, won top prize for her piece, "The Bright Waterfall of Angels."

"The poem's origin came from numerous journal entries, mostly observations from that summer," says Firer, 55, who has had more than 100 poems published in literary reviews and newspapers, including "Ms.," "The Chicago Tribune," "Georgia Review," "Iowa Review" and many others.

"I had just buried both my parents and my sister. I was questioning everything."

Firer, who currently resides in Shorewood, has lived on the western shore of Lake Michigan for most of her life. She is working on her fifth book of poems inspired by Lake Michigan's imagery, language, personal and cultural myth and more.

"I find the imagery, idiom, language and lakescape of Milwaukee interesting, rhythmic and compelling," she says.

Garrison Keillor read a couple of Firer's poems on his program "Writers' Almanac" and the Wisconsin Arts Board and Milwaukee County have awarded her fellowships.

For her winning poem, Firer will receive a $200 gift certificate to Schwartz Bookshops, theater tickets and an OnMilwaukee.com gift pack. She will read her work at Cardinal Stritch on Oct. 28.

Coincidentally, it was a Frank O'Hara poem ("The Day The Lady Died") that Kliner read in a summer creative writing workshop with Firer that inspired her to write her winning poem, "Brady Vibes."

"It was the first real writing class I took this summer at UWM with Ms. Firer and it was just awesome," says Kliner. "She's a great teacher and brought a lot of poems out of me with her enthusiasm for words."

Kliner wrote the piece at 3 a.m., after a caffeine binge. The 19-year-old sophomore says she usually writes during the wee hours, sometimes after hanging out on Brady Street.

"To me, Brady Street is the epitome of the East Side mentality, a relatively liberal and diverse place where anyone can go to get coffee or see art or just hang out," says Kliner, who grew up in Shorewood and is studying journalism and art history at Arizona State University.

"Even in Arizona there's a few art shops and that sort of thing, but the aura and the type of people here really aren't the same."

Kliner will receive a $100 gift certificate to Schwartz Bookshops, theater tickets and an OnMilwaukee.com gift pack.

"It was another incredible contest," says Molly Snyder Edler, OMC writer, editor and contest organizer. "We received almost 60 submissions this year, many that were extremely well crafted."

To read winning poems, go to next page.