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| Congratulations to TENNESSEE HILL, winner of the 2024 Nina Riggs Poetry Award for her poem "Sometimes, Farm Boy," first published in Southern Humanities Review, 2022. |
| HONORABLE MENTION goes to: Hila Ratzabi for "The Names of God," from There Are Still Woods (June Road Press, 2022) & Sara Moore Wagner for "I Never Get What I Want, published in Ecotone) |
A special thank you to our GUEST JUDGE, Molly Spencer, whose
most recent poetry collection is Invitatory (Parlor Press, 2024). Of the
winning poem, she writes:
"One of the highest and best uses of poetry is to reunite us with
what's lost, to imagine other endings, to change—for the length of
one page, maybe two—the past. Tennessee' Hill's "Sometimes, Farm
Boy" does this with the lightest of touches and in a way that gestures
to the reader to come along into that world-between-worlds: the ever
beckoning, ever vanishing world of the poem."
most recent poetry collection is Invitatory (Parlor Press, 2024). Of the
winning poem, she writes:
"One of the highest and best uses of poetry is to reunite us with
what's lost, to imagine other endings, to change—for the length of
one page, maybe two—the past. Tennessee' Hill's "Sometimes, Farm
Boy" does this with the lightest of touches and in a way that gestures
to the reader to come along into that world-between-worlds: the ever
beckoning, ever vanishing world of the poem."
PAST WINNERS & FINALISTS
2023 Winner:
VIEVEE FRANCIS --"1965: Harriet Richardson Wipes Galway Kinnell's
Face after State Troopers Beat Him with a Billy Club," published in The
Kenyon Review, 2021.
Guest Judge, Allison Joseph, writes: "It is a huge talent to find the beauty
and tenderness beneath violence. It’s also a huge talent to take a static
image and describe it so aptly that we feel the moment, not just feel it being
described to us. This prose (but not prosaic poem) reminds us history is
omnipresent. In the poem, Vievee Francis tells us “When I say the picture I
realized someone cared enough to take it…” and defines for us what art is—
we have to care enough to take the picture, to live in the difficult moments,
to bring our personal stories to the art we treasure. Vievee Francis reminds
us, as readers and as people to keep “looking up in the face of the tender
after terror” for that’s the way to “the “grace of gratitude.” It was a honor to
select this poem for recognition."
2023 Honorable Mention:
Jessica Jacobs -- "Reciprocity," published in Pedestal Magazine
Yalie Kamara -- "Besaydoo," published in The Adroit Journal
2023 Finalists:
Andrea Cohen, "Acapulco," The Hopkins Review
Constance Hansen, "Be Small," Southern Humanities Review
Amanda Moore, "A Place, Asleep," Requeening, Ecco Press
Miller Oberman, The Pool, The Hopkins Review
Teya Schaffer, "Just above Almost Audible," Caesura
Donna Spruijt-Metz, "The Green Before Her," Whale Road Review
Jennifer K. Sweeney, "Every morning we boarded our little ship," Foxlogic
Fireweed, The Backwaters Press
2022 Winner:
JESSICA CUELLO --"At Five I Burned Down My Grandmother's Bathroom",
published in Liar (Barrow Street Press, 2021).
Guest Judge, Carrie Fountain, writes: "I'm happy to choose "At Five I
Burned Down My Grandmother's Bathroom" by Jessica Cuello as the
winner of the Nina Riggs Poetry Award. There are many things to praise
here, but it's the masterful way this poem moves that leaves me in awe: it
starts with a clear, imagistic narrative, but soon is moving with such lyric
force (disguised as ease). It picks up speed and weight until the end, which
suddenly transcends. In my experience, the poem stops but my mind
continues traveling. I am transported. This is above all a poem about family
and relationships, legacy and love. And I adore it."
2022 Honorable Mention:
Gabrielle Calvocoressi -- "Miss you. Would like to grab that chilled tofu we
love.""
2022 Finalists:
Ellen Bass, "Getting Into Bed on a December Night" &"Ode to Zeke"
Blas Falconer, "Apology to My Son Who Asks to Live with Us Forever"
Leah Naomi Green, "Field Guide to the Chaparral"
Benjamin S. Grossberg, "My Mother's Dying"
Danusha Lameris, "Threshold"
Leslea Newman, "The First Time We Visit"
Sunni Brown Wilkinson, "Ghost"
2021 Winner:
REGINALD DWAYNE BETTS --"Blood History" , published in The Paris
Review, 2019.
Guest Judge, Maggie Smith, writes: "Family—starting one, or losing an
integral part of one, or just being in one—is dynamic, complicated,
charged. “Domestic life” isn’t synonymous with “quiet life.” “Blood History”
is as much about being a father of sons as it is about being a son who
longed for a father, and Betts makes language itself a place of inquiry in the
poem: longed and wanted, father and listen. Once you read this poem, you’
ll read it again, then three times. Before you know it, it’s in you, part of you.
And isn’t that just like family?"
2021 Honorable Mentions:
George David Clark -- "Ultrasound"
Camille Dungy -- "One to Watch, and One to Pray"
Benjamin S. Grossberg -- "As Are Right Fit"
2021 Finalists:
Arao Ameny, "Home Is a Woman"
Dorothy Chan, "So Chinese Girl"
Beth Gordon, "In Which I Compare My Children to the Apocalypse on a
Friday Night"
Greer Gurland, "Why Am I Pacing the Kitchen Now?"
Donald Levering, "My Only Son--Relapse"
Okwudili Nebeolisa, "After Living with Him"
Lynne Thompson, "She talk like this 'cause me Mum born elsewhere, say"
2020 Winner:
RACHEL ELIZA GRIFFITHS --"Good Mother" , published in Tin House,
2018.
Guest Judge, Maria Hummel, writes: "To read Rachel Eliza Griffiths' "Good
Mother" is to touch the live wire of a daughter's grief, as she walks into a
drugstore before Mother's Day, looking for a card to give her lost mother.
But Griffiths' real electric miracle is how she passes on the maternal
moment of grace that follows--wrapping the reader in her dazzling imagery
and long, hymn-like lines. Both an elegy and a praise song to mothers
everywhere, the ones who give birth to us and the ones who step in to
shepherd us through dark times, "Good Mother" is a stunning, complex,
and deeply moving poem."
2020 Honorable Mention:
Melissa Crowe -- "Dear Terror, Dear Splendor"
Guest Judge, Maria Hummel, writes: "Melissa Crowe's "Dear Terror, Dear
Splendor" is structurally brilliant: a letter composed directly to the pain
and joy of motherhood, on the eve of her daughter's learning to drive.
There's a devastating precision to Crowe's lines, in the repetition of the
sound "or" in her title words and her slow, tense advance into a night
shadowed by future partings. Even among the many skillfully crafted
finalist poems, "Dear Terror, Dear Splendor" was a standout."
2020 Finalists:
Traci Brimhall, "Oh, Wonder"
Tiana Clark, "A Louder Thing"
Carrie Fountain, "Will You?"
Keetje Kuipers, "Still Life with Small Objects of Perfect Choking Size"
Megan Peak, "What I Don't Tell My Mother about Ohio"
Thomas Reiter, "Companions"
Anna Ross, "One Time"
Molly Spencer, "A Wooing, Outright, of My Beloved Ones"
2023 Winner:
VIEVEE FRANCIS --"1965: Harriet Richardson Wipes Galway Kinnell's
Face after State Troopers Beat Him with a Billy Club," published in The
Kenyon Review, 2021.
Guest Judge, Allison Joseph, writes: "It is a huge talent to find the beauty
and tenderness beneath violence. It’s also a huge talent to take a static
image and describe it so aptly that we feel the moment, not just feel it being
described to us. This prose (but not prosaic poem) reminds us history is
omnipresent. In the poem, Vievee Francis tells us “When I say the picture I
realized someone cared enough to take it…” and defines for us what art is—
we have to care enough to take the picture, to live in the difficult moments,
to bring our personal stories to the art we treasure. Vievee Francis reminds
us, as readers and as people to keep “looking up in the face of the tender
after terror” for that’s the way to “the “grace of gratitude.” It was a honor to
select this poem for recognition."
2023 Honorable Mention:
Jessica Jacobs -- "Reciprocity," published in Pedestal Magazine
Yalie Kamara -- "Besaydoo," published in The Adroit Journal
2023 Finalists:
Andrea Cohen, "Acapulco," The Hopkins Review
Constance Hansen, "Be Small," Southern Humanities Review
Amanda Moore, "A Place, Asleep," Requeening, Ecco Press
Miller Oberman, The Pool, The Hopkins Review
Teya Schaffer, "Just above Almost Audible," Caesura
Donna Spruijt-Metz, "The Green Before Her," Whale Road Review
Jennifer K. Sweeney, "Every morning we boarded our little ship," Foxlogic
Fireweed, The Backwaters Press
2022 Winner:
JESSICA CUELLO --"At Five I Burned Down My Grandmother's Bathroom",
published in Liar (Barrow Street Press, 2021).
Guest Judge, Carrie Fountain, writes: "I'm happy to choose "At Five I
Burned Down My Grandmother's Bathroom" by Jessica Cuello as the
winner of the Nina Riggs Poetry Award. There are many things to praise
here, but it's the masterful way this poem moves that leaves me in awe: it
starts with a clear, imagistic narrative, but soon is moving with such lyric
force (disguised as ease). It picks up speed and weight until the end, which
suddenly transcends. In my experience, the poem stops but my mind
continues traveling. I am transported. This is above all a poem about family
and relationships, legacy and love. And I adore it."
2022 Honorable Mention:
Gabrielle Calvocoressi -- "Miss you. Would like to grab that chilled tofu we
love.""
2022 Finalists:
Ellen Bass, "Getting Into Bed on a December Night" &"Ode to Zeke"
Blas Falconer, "Apology to My Son Who Asks to Live with Us Forever"
Leah Naomi Green, "Field Guide to the Chaparral"
Benjamin S. Grossberg, "My Mother's Dying"
Danusha Lameris, "Threshold"
Leslea Newman, "The First Time We Visit"
Sunni Brown Wilkinson, "Ghost"
2021 Winner:
REGINALD DWAYNE BETTS --"Blood History" , published in The Paris
Review, 2019.
Guest Judge, Maggie Smith, writes: "Family—starting one, or losing an
integral part of one, or just being in one—is dynamic, complicated,
charged. “Domestic life” isn’t synonymous with “quiet life.” “Blood History”
is as much about being a father of sons as it is about being a son who
longed for a father, and Betts makes language itself a place of inquiry in the
poem: longed and wanted, father and listen. Once you read this poem, you’
ll read it again, then three times. Before you know it, it’s in you, part of you.
And isn’t that just like family?"
2021 Honorable Mentions:
George David Clark -- "Ultrasound"
Camille Dungy -- "One to Watch, and One to Pray"
Benjamin S. Grossberg -- "As Are Right Fit"
2021 Finalists:
Arao Ameny, "Home Is a Woman"
Dorothy Chan, "So Chinese Girl"
Beth Gordon, "In Which I Compare My Children to the Apocalypse on a
Friday Night"
Greer Gurland, "Why Am I Pacing the Kitchen Now?"
Donald Levering, "My Only Son--Relapse"
Okwudili Nebeolisa, "After Living with Him"
Lynne Thompson, "She talk like this 'cause me Mum born elsewhere, say"
2020 Winner:
RACHEL ELIZA GRIFFITHS --"Good Mother" , published in Tin House,
2018.
Guest Judge, Maria Hummel, writes: "To read Rachel Eliza Griffiths' "Good
Mother" is to touch the live wire of a daughter's grief, as she walks into a
drugstore before Mother's Day, looking for a card to give her lost mother.
But Griffiths' real electric miracle is how she passes on the maternal
moment of grace that follows--wrapping the reader in her dazzling imagery
and long, hymn-like lines. Both an elegy and a praise song to mothers
everywhere, the ones who give birth to us and the ones who step in to
shepherd us through dark times, "Good Mother" is a stunning, complex,
and deeply moving poem."
2020 Honorable Mention:
Melissa Crowe -- "Dear Terror, Dear Splendor"
Guest Judge, Maria Hummel, writes: "Melissa Crowe's "Dear Terror, Dear
Splendor" is structurally brilliant: a letter composed directly to the pain
and joy of motherhood, on the eve of her daughter's learning to drive.
There's a devastating precision to Crowe's lines, in the repetition of the
sound "or" in her title words and her slow, tense advance into a night
shadowed by future partings. Even among the many skillfully crafted
finalist poems, "Dear Terror, Dear Splendor" was a standout."
2020 Finalists:
Traci Brimhall, "Oh, Wonder"
Tiana Clark, "A Louder Thing"
Carrie Fountain, "Will You?"
Keetje Kuipers, "Still Life with Small Objects of Perfect Choking Size"
Megan Peak, "What I Don't Tell My Mother about Ohio"
Thomas Reiter, "Companions"
Anna Ross, "One Time"
Molly Spencer, "A Wooing, Outright, of My Beloved Ones"
FINALISTS:
Rebecca Brock, "Bone Collector, Mad Woman, Boy Mom," The Dodge
Benjamin S. Grossberg, "My Mother Approves," Ploughshares
Andrea Hollander, "After Reading That Empathy Cannot Be Learned," And
Now, Nowhere But Here (Terrapin Books)
Carolina Hotchandani, "Order of Operations," The Book Eaters (Perugia Press)
Athena Kildegaard, "Nostalgia," Southern Humanities Review
Jamie L. Smith, "Swatches," Southern Humanities Review
Molly Tenenbaum, "How Long Have You Been Teaching Banjo?", Ecotone
Diana Whitney, "Dark Beds," Dark Beds (June Road Press)
Rebecca Brock, "Bone Collector, Mad Woman, Boy Mom," The Dodge
Benjamin S. Grossberg, "My Mother Approves," Ploughshares
Andrea Hollander, "After Reading That Empathy Cannot Be Learned," And
Now, Nowhere But Here (Terrapin Books)
Carolina Hotchandani, "Order of Operations," The Book Eaters (Perugia Press)
Athena Kildegaard, "Nostalgia," Southern Humanities Review
Jamie L. Smith, "Swatches," Southern Humanities Review
Molly Tenenbaum, "How Long Have You Been Teaching Banjo?", Ecotone
Diana Whitney, "Dark Beds," Dark Beds (June Road Press)
Click the above link to read the poem and learn more about the
winner.
winner.