Award-Winning Poems 2014
Winter 2014-15
THE ROAD TO BAGHDAD and other poems
by Seth Brady Tucker
Winner of the 2013 Gival Press Poetry Award
Postmark Deadline: December 15
This long-running award gives $1,000 and publication by a well-regarded small press with an interest in LGBTQ and social justice themes. Tucker's We Deserve the Gods We Ask For was the most recent winner. These poems depict the hallucinatory, brutal, sometimes beautiful scenes that a veteran of the Gulf War cannot erase from his mind.
CLOVER
by T. Zachary Cotler
Winner of the 2014 Colorado Prize for Poetry
Postmark Deadline: January 14
This prestigious open manuscript prize includes $2,000 and publication by the Center for Literary Publishing in conjunction with the University of Colorado Press. Cotler's Supplice was the most recent winner. This small but idea-rich poem asks whether the ability to see symbolic meanings deepens or obscures our view of the thing itself.
I HATE TELLING PEOPLE I TEACH ENGLISH and other poems
by Wendy Barker
Winner of the 2014 John Ciardi Prize for Poetry
Postmark Deadline: January 15
This notable contest for full-length poetry manuscripts awards $1,000 and publication by BkMk Press. Barker's One Blackbird at a Time: The Teaching Poems was the most recent winner. In this expansive, conversational, witty poem, she muses about the peculiar place that poetry occupies in a professionalized society.
SOLARIUM
by Jordan Zandi
Winner of the 2014 Kathryn A. Morton Prize in Poetry
Postmark Deadline: February 14
This prestigious award from Sarabande Books gives $2,000 and publication for a poetry collection by a US resident. The title poem from Zandi's winning book is an ecstatic, experimental look at death and blossoming.
Fall 2014
THE JUNEBUGS and other poems
by Steve Scafidi Jr.
Co-winner of the 2014 Miller Williams Arkansas Poetry Prize
Entries must be received by September 30
This open poetry manuscript prize gives $5,000 and publication by the University of Arkansas Press. Scafidi's To the Bramble and the Briar, a collection of poems about Abraham Lincoln, shared the most recent award with Vandana Khanna's Afternoon Masala. The poems in this excerpt are both plain-spoken and visionary, like the legendary president.
TABERNACLE FOR AN ADOLESCENCE and other poems
by Corey Van Landingham
Winner of the 2012 Ohio State University Press/The Journal Award in Poetry
Entries must be received by September 30
This long-running award from a prestigious literary publisher gives $2,500 for a full-length poetry manuscript. This selection from Van Landingham's prizewinning debut collection, Antidote, projects a girl's awakening desires onto an uncanny landscape where everything is growing uncontrollably.
OWL
by Hideko Sueoka
Winner of the 2013 Troubadour International Poetry Prize
Entries must be received by October 20
British literary society Coffee-House Poetry awards a top prize of 5,000 pounds for unpublished poems in English. This innovative reworking of the sonnet form pays tribute to the Oulipo group of experimental poets.
ONE MOMENT REMEMBERED
by Connie Jordan Green
Winner of the 2013 Brick Road Poetry Book Contest
Entries must be received by November 1
This open poetry manuscript prize gives $1,000 and publication by Brick Road Poetry Press, a publisher whose mission is "to publish and promote poetry that entertains, amuses, edifies, and surprises a wide audience of appreciative readers." Green's Household Inventory was the most recent winner. This narrative poem creates a fully realized character with one simple, nostalgic anecdote.
FIRST SESSION
by Gail Martin
Winner of the 2013 Perugia Press Prize
Postmark Deadline: November 15
This well-regarded small press awards $1,000 and publication for a manuscript by a woman poet with no more than one previously published full-length collection. In this selection from Martin's prizewinning Begin Empty-Handed, the narrator counsels a bereaved mother while inwardly free-associating through memories of her own family.
Summer 2014
GHOST FISHING LOUISIANA and SPILL
by Melissa Tuckey
Winner of the 2012 ABZ Press First Book Prize
Postmark Deadline: June 30
This prize for a first poetry collection, from an independent press in West Virginia, gives $1,000 and 50 copies. Tuckey's Tenuous Chapel won the 2012 award. These fierce poems depict the "ecocide" of Louisiana's people and wildlife by industrial toxins.
CHANTEPLEURE and other poems
by Nils Michals
Winner of the 2012 May Sarton New Hampshire Poetry Prize
Postmark Deadline: June 30
Bauhan Publishing, a small press in New Hampshire, sponsors this open poetry manuscript contest with a $1,000 prize. (The contest has no geographic restrictions; "New Hampshire" is in the contest name to distinguish it from other unaffiliated contests named after Sarton.) Michals won the 2012 award for Come Down to Earth. "Chantepleure" means "to sing and cry at the same time". These poems chronicle the dissolving and transcendence of the self through a journey into blurred and snowy landscapes.
NOTES FROM A SALT FLAT PRISONER
by Noel Crook
Winner of the 2013 Crab Orchard Series in Poetry First Book Award
Entries must be received by July 8
This long-running, prestigious contest gives $4,000 and publication by Southern Illinois University Press for a first poetry collection by a US resident. Crook's prizewinning book Salt Moon will be published in 2015. In this poem, which won second prize in the 2012 Beullah Rose Poetry Prize from Smartish Pace, the beauty of the island where the characters labor only sharpens the edge of their torment.
CROSSING THE GAP
by Travis Mossotti
Winner of the 2013 Melissa Lanitis Gregory Poetry Prize
Postmark Deadline: August 31
This open poetry manuscript prize gives $500 and publication by Bona Fide Books. Mossotti's prizewinning Field Study will be published in 2014. This blue-collar love poem praises the simple moments of intimacy that feel stronger than death.
ALMOST EKPHRASTIC and other poems
by KMA Sullivan
Winner of the 2013 St. Lawrence Book Award
Entries must be received by August 31 (don't enter before July 1)
Black Lawrence Press sponsors this $1,000 prize for an unpublished first collection of poems or short stories (both genres compete together). Sullivan's poetry collection Necessary Fire won the 2013 award. The speaker of these stream-of-consciousness poems asks unsettling questions about great works of art that reflect her anxiety as both subject and object of the gaze.
Spring 2014
QUIXOTE IN THE BEDROOM
by David Bartone
Winner of the 2013 Sawtooth Poetry Prize
Entries must be received by March 10
This established award series gives $1,500 and publication by Ahsahta Press. This selection from Bartone's prizewinning collection Practice on Mountains is both a love poem and a meditation on the insufficiency of love poems.
DITCHING and MUSE
by R.A. Villanueva
Winner of the 2013 Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Poetry
Postmark Deadline: March 15
The prestigious Prairie Schooner Book Prizes award $3,000 and publication by the University of Nebraska Press for poetry and short story collections. Villanueva's Reliquaria was the most recent poetry winner. These lyric poems depict journeys across water as a movement from one risk to another.
HOW TO TELL MY DAD THAT I KISSED A MAN
by F. Douglas Brown
Winner of the 2013 Cave Canem Poetry Prize
Entries must be received by March 17
This prominent first-book contest for African-American poets gives $1,000 and publication by the University of Pittsburgh Press. Brown's Zero to Three was the latest winner. In this lush poem, the narrator goes from helpless intoxication to ownership of his desires.
AFTER HOURS, PROVINCETOWN CEMETERY
by Kendra DeColo
Winner of the 2013 Saturnalia Books Poetry Prize
Entries must be postmarked by March 20 or entered online by April 1
This avant-garde press gives $2,000 and publication for a poetry manuscript. DeColo's Thieves in the Afterlife was the latest winner. Sex and death intertwine in this poem of reckless ecstasy.
THE SLAVE'S NOTEBOOK and other poems
by Ruth Ellen Kocher
Winner of the 2013 Noemi Book Award for Poetry
Entries must be received by April 30
This well-regarded small press gives awards of $1,000 and publication for books of poetry and fiction. Kocher's Ending in Planes was the most recent poetry winner. The speakers of these disquieting, sharply beautiful poems wrestle with language to inscribe a place for themselves in a tradition that has dehumanized them.
