2013 Prizes for Contributors to Poetry Announced

CHICAGO — Eliza Griswold, Anna Maria Hong, Laura Kasischke, Idra Novey, Miller Oberman, Randall Mann, Joshua Mehigan, Seamus Murphy and Michael Robbins are the winners of eight awards for contributions to Poetry over the past year. The prizes are awarded for poems, prose and visual content published during the past 12 months, from October 2012 to September 2013.

THE LEVINSON PRIZE, presented annually since 1914 through the generosity of the late Salmon O. Levinson and his family, in the amount of $500, is awarded to Joshua Mehigan for his poems “The Professor,” “The Cement Plant” and “Down in the Valley” in the October 2012 issue and “The Orange Bottle” in the February 2013 issue. Mehigan’s second book of poems, Accepting the Disaster, is forthcoming from Farrar, Straus and Giroux. The oldest of the magazine’s prizes still awarded today, the Levinson Prize has been awarded to such great poets as Wallace Stevens (1920), Edna St. Vincent Millay (1931), H.D. (1938), E.E. Cummings (1939), Dylan Thomas (1945), Muriel Rukeyser (1947), John Berryman (1950), Anne Sexton (1962), John Ashbery (1977), Yusef Komunyakaa (1997) and Rita Dove (1998).

THE BESS HOKIN PRIZE, established in 1948 through the generosity of Poetry’s late friend and guarantor Mrs. David Hokin, in the amount of $1,000, is awarded to Laura Kasischke for her poems “Ativan,” “Game,” “The Second Death” and “You’ve Come Back to Me” in the October 2012 issue. Kasischke received the National Book Critics Circle Award for her eighth collection of poetry, Space, In Chains (Copper Canyon Press, 2011). She lives in Chelsea, Michigan with her husband and son. Past winners of The Bess Hokin Prize include Ruth Stone (1953), Sylvia Plath (1957), W.S. Merwin (1962), Adrienne Rich (1963) and Paul Muldoon (1996).

THE FREDERICK BOCK PRIZE, founded in 1981 by friends in memory of the former associate editor of Poetry, in the amount of $500, is awarded to Anna Maria Hong for her poems “Pluralisms” and “A Fable" in the April 2013 issue. Hong teaches creative writing at the UCLA Extension Writers’ Program and was the Bunting Fellow in poetry at Harvard’s Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study in 2010-11. Past winners of The Frederick Bock Prize are Billy Collins (1992) and Jane Kenyon (1993), among others.

THE J. HOWARD AND BARBARA M.J. WOOD PRIZE, endowed since 1994, in the amount of $5,000, is awarded to Randall Mann for his poems “Nothing,” “Order” and “Proprietary” in the April 2013 issue. Mann’s third book of poems, Straight Razor, is forthcoming from Persea Books in October 2013.

THE JOHN FREDERICK NIMS MEMORIAL PRIZE FOR TRANSLATION, established in 1999 by Bonnie Larkin Nims, trustees of the Poetry Foundation, and friends of the late poet, translator, and editor, in the amount of $500, is awarded to Miller Oberman for her translation of “Old English Rune Poem” by Anonymous in the July/August 2013 issue. Oberman is pursuing doctoral studies of poetry and poetics at the University of Connecticut. Her poetry collection Useful was a finalist for the 2012 National Poetry Series.

THE FRIENDS OF LITERATURE PRIZE, established in 2002 by the Friends of Literature, in the amount of $500, is awarded to Idra Novey for her poems in the November 2012 issue, “The Visitor,” “La Prima Victoria” and “Of the Divine as Absence and Single Letter.” Novey is the author of Exit, Civilian (University of Georgia Press, 2012) a 2011 National Poetry Series Selection, and The Next Country (Alice James Books, 2008).  

THE EDITORS PRIZE FOR FEATURE ARTICLE, established in 2005, in the amount of $1,000, is awarded to Eliza Griswold and Seamus Murphy for their contributions to the June 2013 issue, Landays. Griswold, a Guggenheim fellow, is the author of a collection of poems, Wideawake Field (FSG, 2007), and a nonfiction book, The Tenth Parallel: Dispatches from the Fault-line between Christianity and Islam (FSG, 2010), which was awarded the Anthony J. Lukas Prize in non-fiction. Photographer and filmmaker Seamus Murphy began photographing Afghanistan in 1994, leading to the book A Darkness Visible: Afghanistan (Saqi Books, 2008).

THE EDITORS PRIZE FOR REVIEWING, established in 2004, in the amount of $1,000, is awarded to Michael Robbins for his review of Postmodern American Poetry: A Norton Anthology in the July/August 2013 issue. Robbins is the author of Alien vs. Predator (Penguin, 2012). He is at work on a critical book, Equipment for Living (Simon & Schuster).

The prizes are organized and administered by the Poetry Foundation in Chicago, publisher of Poetry magazine. Browse all past issues of Poetry magazine since 1912.

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About Poetry Magazine
Founded in Chicago by Harriet Monroe in 1912, Poetry is the oldest monthly devoted to verse in the English-speaking world. Monroe’s “Open Door” policy, set forth in Volume 1 of the magazine, remains the most succinct statement of Poetry’s mission: to print the best poetry written today, in whatever style, genre, or approach. The magazine established its reputation early by publishing the first important poems of T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, Marianne Moore, Wallace Stevens, H.D., William Carlos Williams, Carl Sandburg, and other now-classic authors. In succeeding decades it has presented—often for the first time—works by virtually every major contemporary poet.

About the Poetry Foundation
The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetrymagazine, is an independent literary organization committed to a vigorous presence for poetry in our culture. It exists to discover and celebrate the best poetry and to place it before the largest possible audience. The Poetry Foundation seeks to be a leader in shaping a receptive climate for poetry by developing new audiences, creating new avenues for delivery, and encouraging new kinds of poetry through innovative partnerships, prizes and programs. For more information, please visit poetryfoundation.org.

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