Award-Winning Poems 2015
Winter 2015-16
DYNAMITE
by Anders Carlson-Wee
Winner of the 2015 Frost Place Chapboook Competition
Entries must be received by January 5
The Frost Place, a literary foundation housed at Robert Frost's New Hampshire homestead, sponsors this $250 award for a poetry chapbook manuscript. Winner is published by Bull City Press and invited to read at the Frost Place Poetry Seminar. In the title poem from Carlson-Wee's winning collection, two young brothers' rough-housing skirts the edge between playfulness and violence.
THE TAKE THIS JOB AND SHOVE IT ODE
by Stephanie Lenox
Winner of the 2015 Colorado Prize for Poetry
Postmark Deadline: January 14
This open poetry manuscript prize from Colorado State University gives $2,000 and publication by the Center for Literary Publishing. This brutally honest poem from Lenox's prizewinning collection The Business shows how we are alienated by our common struggle for survival.
REPRODUCTION
by Bonnie Bolling
Winner of the 2015 John Ciardi Prize for Poetry
Postmark Deadline: January 15
This open poetry manuscript prize gives $1,000 and publication by BkMk Press at the University of Missouri–Kansas City. Bolling's The Red Hijab was the most recent winner. In this witty but serious poem, a pregnant woman reflects that scarcity and competition attend every miracle of birth.
PINKO
by Kevin Holden
Winner of the 2015 Fence Modern Poets Series
Entries must be received by February 29 (don't enter before February 1)
This open poetry manuscript prize gives $1,000 and publication by Fence Books, a press known for experimental and cross-genre work. Holden's Solar won the most recent contest. This sensual and sinister poem free-associates on a color that connects memories of pleasure and of death.
HOMOSEXUAL INTERRACIAL DATING IN THE SOUTH IN TWO VOICES and other poems
by Rajiv Mohabir
Winner of the 2015 Kundiman Poetry Prize
Entries must be received by March 15 (don't enter before February 1)
Kundiman, an arts organization for Asian Americans, offers this $1,000 award in conjunction with Tupelo Press, which publishes the winning poetry manuscript. Contest is open to Asian-American writers at any stage of their career. Mohabir's The Cowherd's Son was the most recent winner. This suite of found poems reshuffles text from a taxidermy manual to explore the chase and capture, no longer of birds, but of lovers in a perilous environment.
Fall 2015
VERDUGO and WATCH FIRE
by David Kutz-Marks
Winner of the 2014 Juniper Prize for Poetry
Postmark Deadline: September 30
This prestigious contest gives two awards of $1,000 and publication by University of Massachusetts Press: one for a first book of poems, and one for a collection by an author at any stage of their career. Kutz-Marks won the most recent prize for Violin Playing Herself in a Mirror. In these poems, reminiscent of Kafka's fables, the speaker is shocked into self-examination by impossible events, such as living through his own beheading.
MATCH GIRLS
by Ilyse Kusnetz
Winner of the 2014 T.S. Eliot Prize for Poetry
Postmark Deadline: October 31
This long-running award from Truman State University Press gives $2,000 and publication for a poetry manuscript. This incisive poem from Kusnetz's prizewinning Small Hours compares victims of mercury poisoning, from factory girls to Chinese royalty, suggesting that their common fate is not quite enough to level the inequality even after death.
FROM "MANKINDNESS"
by Christina Davis
Winner of the 2012 Nightboat Poetry Prize
Entries must be received by November 15
Nightboat Books awards $1,000 and publication for a full-length poetry manuscript. Davis's collection An Ethic was the 2012 winner. This minimalist poem plays with grammar and word resemblances to investigate intimacy between lovers and family members—so close, yet so prone to slip past understanding one another.
CORPSE FLOWER
by Sonia Greenfield
Winner of the 2014 Codhill Press Poetry Award
Postmark Deadline: December 10
This open poetry manuscript prize gives $1,000 and publication by SUNY Press. Greenfield's Boy with a Halo at the Farmer's Market was the most recent winner. This poignant poem is dedicated to James Foley, an American journalist beheaded by Islamic radicals in Syria.
Summer 2015
FAT SPEAKS and TWICE WOODS HEBREW
by Deborah Gorlin
Winner of the 2014 May Sarton New Hampshire Poetry Prize
Postmark Deadline: June 30
This open poetry manuscript contest from Bauhan Publishing, an independent press in New Hampshire, awards $1,000, publication, and 100 author copies. Gorlin's Life of the Garment was the most recent winner. These poems invoke the sublime in unexpected places, from trees that mimic Hebrew prayers, to body fat singing an ode to itself for the warmth it brings.
DEVIL'S OPTICS
by Margaret Ross
Winner of the 2014 Omnidawn First/Second Book Poetry Contest
Postmark Deadline: June 30
This contest for poets with no more than one prior published book gives $1,000 and publication by Omnidawn Publishing, a well-regarded small press with an innovative aesthetic. Ross's A Timeshare won the most recent award. This poem makes familiar words strange through repetition and wordplay, suggesting that faith and imagination contribute an unsettling amount to the body of knowledge we call scientific facts.
MUK-BANG and CRONE
by Catriona Wright
Winner of the 2014 Lit POP Award for Poetry
Entries must be received by July 1
Matrix Magazine sponsors this contest with $1,000 prizes for poetry and fiction by residents of the US and Canada. Winners also receive an expenses-paid trip to read at the POP Montreal festival in September. Wright won the 2014 award for a selection of poems. These sensual, disturbing poems examine how food relates to power and intimacy.
ANNA K'S LAST THOUGHTS ON LOVE and other poems
by Amy Randolph
Winner of the 2013 Astounding Beauty Ruffian Press Poetry Chapbook Award
Postmark Deadline: July 15
This biennial award, offered in odd-numbered years, gives $1,000 and publication for a poetry chapbook manuscript by a US citizen. Randolph's A Particular Sorrow, a Tree won the most recent contest. These poems find angels in natural phenomena like rain and wind, lending their voices to express human loss, longing, and rapture, which would otherwise be beyond words.
MEET PILGRIM and THE MASTER'S HOUSE
by Rebecca Foust
Winner of the 2015 Press 53 Award for Poetry
Entries must be received by July 31
This open poetry manuscript contest for a US author gives $1,000, publication by an established independent press, and travel expenses for an award ceremony in North Carolina. Foust's Paradise Drive, a book-length sonnet sequence, won the 2015 prize (2014 deadline). These excerpts introduce Pilgrim, the protagonist who journeys from hardscrabble Pennsylvania coal country to the wealth and emotional emptiness of Marin County, California. "Waist-deep in bright ruin, she labors to sing, /wondering if wanting is, after all, all /there is."
Spring 2015
LARES AND PENATES
by Caki Wilkinson
Winner of the 2014 Lexi Rudnitsky/Editor's Choice Award
Entries must be received by March 5
This poetry manuscript prize from Persea Books is open to Americans with at least one previous published full-length collection. The winner receives $1,000, publication, and a $1,000 stipend for book promotion expenses. Wilkinson's The Wynona Stone Poems was the most recent winner. The title of this satirical poem about suburban ennui refers to the household idols of the ancient Romans.
LANDSCAPE WITH AMERICAN DREAM
by Janine Joseph
Winner of the 2014 Kundiman/Tupelo Press Poetry Prize
Entries must be received by March 15
Two prestigious literary organizations co-sponsor this $1,000 award for a poetry manuscript by an Asian-American writer. Joseph's Driving Without a License was the most recent winner. The narrator of this trenchant poem watches herself play the role of "rootless" consumer in an upscale supermarket, while remembering her immigrant family's hardships.
WE ARE AT WAR
by David Ray Vance
Winner of the 2012 Antivenom Poetry Award
Postmark Deadline: March 31
This long-running award for a first or second book of poetry includes $1,000 and publication by Elixir Press. In the spirit of George Orwell, this poem from Vance's prizewinning book Stupor alerts us to the power of abstracted and clichéd language to confirm our biases.
A MILE OUTSIDE OF YELLOWSTONE
by Ed Skoog
Winner of the 2014 Washington State Book Awards
Postmark Deadline: April 1
This free contest gives $500 awards for published books by writers who were born in Washington State or have lived in the state for at least three years. Genres include poetry, fiction, biography, memoir, and literature for young people. Skoog's Rough Day (Copper Canyon Press) was the most recent winner. In this poem, he meditates on hitchhiking across the American West, a harsh environment that teaches wisdom.
A BATHING GOWN A GIRL CAN MAKE and other poems
by Sarah Rose Nordgren
Winner of the 2013 Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize
Postmark Deadline: April 30
The University of Pittsburgh Press sponsors this high-profile $5,000 prize for an unpublished first book of poems. This selection from Nordgren's prizewinning Best Bones interrogates the symbols and confinements of girlhood, finding secret meanings in a sewing pattern, a dollhouse, an Easter egg hunt.
