6th Anthony Hecht Poetry Prize

Judge: James Fenton

The winner of the sixth Anthony Hecht Poetry Prize was Mark Kraushaar’s The Uncertainty Principle.

Mr Kraushaar, of Lake Mills, Wisconsin, USA, has received a cheque for $3,000 and Waywiser will publish The Uncertainty Principle on 8 November 2011. The book will be launched at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington DC.

It took the press’s screening panel three 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 the 2010 judge, James Fenton. Waywiser’s Senior American Editor, Joseph Harrison, rang Mr Kraushaar with Mr Fenton’s decision in the first week of May.

Our congratulations go not just to Mr Kraushaar 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 2010 contest has been another resounding success.

At the same time as we publish The Uncertainty Principle, Waywiser will be publishing an anthology of poems by some of the contestants who have made it as far as the semi-finals in the first five years of the Hecht Prize. If you would like to read poems by the people who made it that far in the 2010 competition, please click on the relevant name and title below. Most of the poets have a page featuring two of the poems from their manuscript and these are followed by brief biographical notes and publication acknowledgements.

Winner

Mark Kraushaar, The Uncertainty Principle

Nominees

(in name order)

Michelle Bonczek, Through the Skin of This World

Daniel Bosch, Death’s Doorman

Steven Brown, Bone Shine

Katy Didden, Avalanche

Amy Greacen, A Modern Herbal

Karen Holmberg, Axis Mundi

Lesley Jenike, Genius of the Place

Andrew McCord, Dawn out from Night

Patrick Moran, Dopplegangster

Sierra Nelson, The Lachrymose Report

Kathy Nilsson, The Infant Scholar

Jessica Piazza, Interrobang

Aaron Poochigian, The Cosmic Purr

Alison Powell, On the Desire to Levitate

Kathleen Rooney, Robinson Alone Provides the Image

Don Schofield, Before Kodachrome

Ravi Shankar, The New Transcendence

Eric Smith, Black Hole Factory

Jane Springer, Murder Ballad

Jamie Joel Thomas , Etch and Blur

Matthew Thorburn, This Time Tomorrow

Mike White, How to Make a Bird with Two Hands