10th Anthony Hecht Poetry Prize

Judge: Anthony Thwaite

The winner of the tenth Anthony Hecht Poetry Prize was Jaimee Hills’s How to Avoid Speaking.

Ms Hills, of Whitefish Bay, Wisconsin, will receive a cheque for $3,000 and Waywiser will publish How to Avoid Speaking, her first collection of poems, in November 2015, when she will read alongside Anthony Thwaite, the tenth contest’s judge, at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C.

It took the press’s screening panel two months of careful reading, deliberation and discussion to narrow the field to the group of finalists which, stripped of all identifying reference, was then sent to Mr Thwaite. His decision was relayed to the press in the second week of March.

Our congratulations go not just to Jaimee Hills and to those whose manuscripts reached the later stages of the contest – the finalists and semi-finalists are listed below – but to everyone else who entered. It is thanks to everyone who participated that the latest contest has been another resounding success.

Winner

Jaimee Hills, How to Avoid Speaking

Nominees

(in name order)

Neil Aitken, Babbage’s Dream

Kevin Barents, Bearings

Joshua Coben, Gallows Heaven

Scott Coffel, The Great Blue Question Mark

Kevin Craft, Vagrants and Accidentals

Martin Edmunds, Polychrome

Julie Funderburk, The Door that Always Opens

Heather June Gibbons, Exploded View

Stephanie Goehring, You Wake to an Alarm

Sonia Greenfield, Boy with a Halo at the Farmer’s Market

Leslie Harrison, Triptych

Todd Hearon, Crows in Eden

Johnny Horton, A Bedtter Word for Father

Sara Miller, Spellbound

Austin Segrest, Barrel Roll

Eric Smith, Black Hole Factory

Victor Tapner, The Limitations of Artificial Intelligence

Alissa Valles, Dr Salvage

Bob Watts, The Tendency of Bodies to Remain at Rest

Mike White, Where Once the Body Lies

Amy Wright, Upping the Panoply