16th Anthony Hecht Poetry Prize
Judge: Vijay Seshadri
The winner of the sixteenth Anthony Hecht Poetry Prize is Danielle Blau’s peep.
Ms Blau, of Ridgewood, New York will receive a cheque for $3,000 and Waywiser will publish peep in the spring of 2022, when she will read alongside Vijay Seshadri, the sixteenth contest’s judge, at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles.
It took the press’s screening panel two months of careful reading, deliberation and discussion to narrow the field of 400 submissions to the group of finalists which, stripped of all identifying reference, was then sent to Professor Seshadri. His decision was relayed to the press in the last week of March.
Our congratulations go not just to Danielle Blau and to those whose manuscripts reached the later stages of the contest — the semi-finalists and finalists are listed below — but to everyone else who entered. It is thanks to everyone who participated that the latest contest has been another big success.
Please click on the linked headings below if you wish to read poems by, and biographical notes about, the poets who reached the latter stages of this contest.
Winner
Nominees
(in name order)
Martin Edmunds, Flame in a Stable
Derek Gromadzki, Horology
Jared K. Hayley, The Depopulate
Sophie Klahr, Two Open Doors in a Field
Mary Tautin Moloney, At the Base of Kaaterskill Falls
Laura Newbern, A Night in the Country
Isaac Pickell, It’s Not Over Once You Figure It Out
Marsha Pomerantz, Ravel and Cleave
Michael Rutherglen, Michael Rutherglen, Summer in Symmetry
Jessica Savitz, Television in the Mountains
Christian Schlegel, Friend-Poems