The list of writers being considered for the £60,000 Dylan Thomas prize has been announced, and poet Nick Laird holds two of the fifteen spots – one for his novel, Utterly Monkey and one for his collection of poetry, To a Fault, which was short listed for the 2005 Forward Poetry prize for a first collection. Laird has attracted attention on a number of fronts, including that of being the husband of hot (in all senses of the word) novelist Zadie Smith, and being one of that “whole Cambridge writing crowd”.

The reviews of To a Fault are mixed – depressing is one word used to describe them, but no one denies the talent of the writer, who is also a novelist and lawyer. The collection includes love poems and political poems and poems that mix love and politics, all of them seen through the caustic eye of a young man who grew up in the shadows of a Northern Ireland where “the shooting has all but stopped, but the divisions remain marked and clear”. “You don”t understand how odd your childhood was until you get away,” he said in an interview with Guardian writer Tanya Gold. “Then you realise that it”s not normal to be stopped every day by soldiers with guns who look in your schoolbag. The haunted schoolboy comes through clearly in this first collection. Laird is already at work on a second collection.

The Dylan Thomas Prize was established in 2004 and is awarded each year to an outstanding writer under the age of 30. It”s the brainchild of a Swansea cultural critic, Peter Stead, who got the idea from a small town in Italy which awards an annual prize for literature. The shortlist will be revealed in September and the winner of the £60,000 prize will be named at a ceremony at Swansea”s Brangwyn Hall on October 27 – the date of Dylan Thomas”s birthday.

The Guardian, a UK newspaper, reported Saturday that Nobel Prize Laureate Seamus Heaney”s 12th book, District and Circle, has made the short list for the prestigious Forward Poetry Prize. Established in 1991, the Forward Poetry Prize is awarded each year to the year”s Best Collection, Best Single Poem and Best First Collection. Its £10,000 prize is one of the richest poetry prizes awarded in the UK each year.

The Guardian article raises the question “Is it fair for Heaney, an established, well-known poet, to be entered on equal footing with competitors just publishing their second or third books?” Or, to quote them more directly,

In recent years it has been rare for artists of Heaney”s rank to be associated with poetry competitions, which are generally seen as a chance for writers with less star status.

In many ways, this minor controversy – which is, for the record, completely resolved within the Guardian”s short article – mirrors the larger one about poetry contests in general. I”m not talking here about the obvious scam contests whose only purpose is to bilk money from naive poets who end up paying for the publication of an anthology with their poem in it. I”m talking about the “legitimate” contests which have become one of the major avenues of publication for poetry in today”s world. It has become almost de rigeur for small presses to sponsor poetry contests with the prize being cash and publication of the winning book of poetry. In order to enter, the poet pays a reading fee that ranges from $10 to $40. The combined reading fees pay for the prize and the publication of the book, and help further the press itself.

The question has arisen – and was fanned into a blazing flame by Foetry.com, an alleged watchdog and whistleblower site that operated anonymously for a couple of years before the identity of its owner was revealed. Alan Cordle, a librarian and husband of a prize-winning poet, said that he started the site after many discussions with his wife about what he saw as cronyism in the awarding of prizes in many poetry contests. The fallout of his vitriolic attacks on many judges of poetry contests included a number of those judges deciding to stop judging. Those attacks also prompted many contests to create guidelines for their contests that included such things as disqualifying any poet whose work had been previously published in that press, or who had any relationship, however tenuous, with the judge(s) for that contest.

This seems on the surface a good thing, and yet it raises some troublesome questions. If an open contest is meant to choose the best book of poetry published in a particular year, is it reasonable to hamper that aim by excluding those with well-known names? In the small world of poetry, is it fair to disqualify a poet because he has taken a class with a particular judge? Is the contest paradigm simply a bad bad way to promote and publish poetry?

The answers to those questions are undoubtedly subject to viewpoint and open to interpretation. For the time being, the contest model is the one that works to bring new poets to the attention of publishers and readers. Until the market for poetry approaches that of the market for novels, nonfiction and even song lyrics, it may be the only way to go. And that, perhaps, is the most unfair part of the entire argument.

New York, May 15, 2006- The Academy of American Poets is pleased to announce that Anne Pierson Wiese has won the 2006 Walt Whitman Award for her first book-length collection of poems, Floating City, which will be published in the spring of 2007 by Louisiana State University Press. The winning manuscript was chosen by Kay Ryan from over 1,250 entries in an open competition. The Academy of American Poets has awarded Ms. Wiese a $5,000 cash prize and will purchase copies of her book for distribution to its members. She will also receive a one-month residency at the Vermont Studio Center. The runner-up was Kevin McFadden for his manuscript Hardscrabble.

On selecting Ms. Wiese’s manuscript for the award, Kay Ryan wrote:

This remarkable book is proof that a light hand is the most masterful. Anne Pierson Wiese’s poems read so easily and pleasurably that one hardly realizes one has been confidently moved to a slightly different dimension, a world resembling ours but better observed, and quieter — in the best sense. Wiese understands the virtue of restraint — how the right word, the exact detail, clarity of form, invite the mind instead of stunning it. This is completely accomplished poetry of a very brave kind, daring to be immodestly good — modestly.

Anne Pierson Wiese was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and grew up in Brooklyn, New York. She is a graduate of Amherst College and the New York University Graduate Writing Workshop, and currently lives and works in New York City. Wiese received a 2005 Fellowship in Poetry from the New York Foundation for the Arts and was a winner of the 2004 “Discovery” / The Nation Poetry Contest. Wiese’s poems have appeared in many journals, including The Nation, Prarie Schooner, Raritan, Atlanta Review, The Alaska Quarterly Review, Quarterly West, Rattapallax, The Carolina Quarterly, The Hawai’i Pacific Review, and elsewhere. Her work will also appear in the anthology Broken Land: Poems of Brooklyn.

Kay Ryan was born in California in 1945 and grew up in the small towns of the San Joaquin Valley and the Mojave Desert. She received both a bachelor’s and master’s degree from UCLA. Ryan has published several collections of poetry, including The Niagara River (Grove Press, 2005); Say Uncle (2000); Elephant Rocks (1996); Flamingo Watching (1994), which was a finalist for both the Lamont Poetry Selection and the Lenore Marshall Prize; Strangely Marked Metal (1985); and Dragon Acts to Dragon Ends (1983). Ryan’s awards include the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, a Guggenheim fellowship, an Ingram Merrill Award, a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Union League Poetry Prize, the Maurice English Poetry Award, and three Pushcart Prizes. Her work has been selected four times for The Best American Poetry and was included in The Best of the Best American Poetry 1988 – 1997. Ryan was elected a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets in 2006. Since 1971, she has lived in Marin County in California.

Established in 1935, Louisiana State University Press is one of the oldest and largest university presses in the South and one of the outstanding publishers of scholarly and regional books in the country. Its long-standing commitment to publishing fine contemporary poetry extends back more than four decades. Since 1964 the Press has published more than 250 books of poetry by more than 100 poets, and many of these volumes have received distinguished honors, including the Lamont Poetry Selection, the National Book Critics’ Circle Award, the Poets’ Prize, the American Book Award, the National Book Award, and two Pulitzer Prizes.

The Vermont Studio Center offers four-to-twelve-week studio residencies year-round to mid-career poets, painters, sculptors, printmakers, photographers, and writers. The setting is the banks of the Gihon River in rural Johnson, Vermont, a town of 2,500 located in the heart of the northern Green Mountains. Each Studio Center Residency features abundant working time, the companionship of fifty artists and writers from across the country and around the world, and access to a roster of prominent visiting artists and writers. All residencies include comfortable housing, private studio space, and superb food. Two visiting writers per month are in residence at the Studio Center for one week each to offer readings, a craft talk, and optional conferences with each of the twelve writing residents.

The Academy of American Poets was founded in 1934 to support American poets at all stages of their careers and to foster the appreciation of contemporary poetry. Through its awards program, the Academy awards well over $200,000 each year to individual poets. These awards include the Academy Fellowship, the Wallace Stevens Award, the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize, the James Laughlin Award, the Walt Whitman Award, the Raiziss/de Palchi Translation Award, the Harold Morton Landon Translation Award, student poetry prizes at nearly 200 colleges and universities, and the American Poets Fund. The Academy also administers National Poetry Month (April), the Online Poetry Classroom, the Poetry Audio Archive, and Poets.org, our award-winning website.

For more information on programs and membership, contact us:

The Academy of American Poets
584 Broadway, Suite 604
New York, NY 10012
tel (212) 274-0343
fax (212) 274-9427

or visit www.poets.org

In a ceremony to be held Wednesday at Buckingham Palace, Fleur Adcock will be presented with the Queen”s Gold Medal for Poetry. The Queen”s Gold Medal has been presented annually to a poet for a book of verse penned by a poet from the United Kingdom or a Commonwealth realm since 1933. Ms. Adcock is only the seventh woman to have been awarded the prize. Traditionally, the announcement of the award is made on the birthday of William Shakespeare, April 23.

Adcock was born in New Zealand in the second year that the Queen”s Gold Medal was awarded. The New Zealand native spent much of her adult life in Great Britain, though, and she has often been called “The Expatriate Poet”. Her poetry reflects the view of the outsider, she says, observing from a distance. She is known for her “non-romantic” poetry, a fact which apparently sparks some amused chagrin in the poet. In an interview with Richard King of The Australian, Adcock muses, “Of course, I”ve written lots of poems about how awful men are. Not men in general, just some men I happen to have known.”

The interview reveals a wry, lively woman with passionate ideals and a self-deprecating sense of humor, a personality that emerges in Adcock”s poetry as well. In speaking of the upcoming award ceremony, the poet says, “One is not allowed to lead the conversation. I”d be happy to talk about my grandchildren in New Zealand. As it is, the Queen has to talk about poetry. It must be awful for her.”

But not for us. For a taste of this year”s Queen”s Gold Medal winner, you can visit:
two poems by Fleur Adcock
Fleur Adcock reading her own poetry

Brathwaite, Legris Awarded Poetry Prize

Last night at a gala dinner attended by some of the brightest lights in international poetry, Canadian Sylvia Legris and Barbadian Kamau Braithwaite were awarded the prestigious Griffin Poetry Prize. Considered to be one of the richest prizes in poetry, the Griffin Prize was established in 2000 by Canadian car magnate Scott Griffin, along with writers that included Margaret Atwood. Each year, the Griffin Trust awards $100,000 to a Canadian and an international poet. Griffin established the prize through the Griffin Trust after attending a dinner with writer Michael Ondaatje and playwright David Young, where the three discussed the state of poetry in the world and concluded that something had to be done to bring poetry back to center stage in people”s lives. Young referred to poetry as an “invisible art”

This year, Legris and Braithwaite topped the list of 441 entrants for the literary prize. Legris won for her book Nerve Squall, published by Coach House Books, and Braithwaite for Slow Horses, from Wesleyan University Press. Each of the winners takes home a prize of $50,000.

Other books that made the short list for the award included:

Phil Hall, An Oak Hunch
Erin Moore, Little theatres
Durs Grunbein, Ashes for Breakfast: Selected Poems
Michael Palmer, Company of Moths
Dunya Mikhail, The War Works Hard