2009 Sawtooth Poetry Prize Winner
Ahsahta Press is delighted to announce the winner of its eighth annual Sawtooth Poetry Prize competition: Julie Carr of Denver, Colorado, whose manuscript 100 Notes on Violence was selected by Rae Armantrout. She will receive the $1,500 prize in addition to the publication of her book by Ahsahta Press in January 2010.
Armantrout, whose most recent book, Versed, was published by Wesleyan University Press in 2009, chose the winner from among 670 entries, 45 of which were named semifinalists. Of that group, 20 were named finalists for the prize. [List follows.] The press received manuscripts from 11 foreign countries as well as 45 states.
Carr is the author of Equivocal (Alice James Press, 2007) and Mead: An Epithalamion, which won the University of Georgia Press’s contemporary poetry prize for 2004. Her poems have appeared in such journals as Volt, American Letters and Commentary, Pool, Verse, The Iowa Review, Boston Review, and TriQuarterly. She teaches at the University of Colorado, Boulder.
In addition to Carr’s book, Ahsahta will publish the runner-up manuscript, Sancta, by Andrew Grace of Cincinnati, Ohio.
Ahsahta Press, named for the Mandan word for “Rocky Mountain bighorn sheep,” was founded in 1974 and publishes six books of poetry per year, one of which is the winner of its annual contest. The 2010 contest, which runs from January 1 to March 1, will be judged by Terrance Hayes. Hayes, author of Wind in a Box (Penguin, 2006) and Hip Logic (2002), a National Poetry Series volume, has received the Kate Tufts Discovery Award, the Whiting Writers Award, and an NEA Fellowship, and teaches at Carnegie-Mellon University.
Ahsahta Press is based at Boise State University in Boise, Idaho, and is directed by Janet
Holmes, a professor in the MFA Program for Creative Writing at Boise State.
See guidelines for next year’s contest
Finalists for the 2009 Sawtooth Poetry Prize:
Erin M. Bertram, Like the Sound in the Throat of a Dove
Christopher Deweese, Marvels
Annie Guthrie, the selfer, evidence
Lucy Ives, cartoon
J. L. Jacobs, The Northernmost Habitable Region
Genevieve Kaplan, In the Ice House
Daniel Khalastchi, The Maturation of Man
Mark Lamoureux, Sometimes Things Seem Very Dark
Chloë Joan López, Quelled Communiqués
Sara Nicholson, The Living Method
Justin Petropolous, Dead Letter Office
Jennifer Pilch, Mercury Bloom
Chris Pusateri, Common Time
Zach Savich, Megachurch
Rob Schlegel, Iceblink
Fred Schmalz, Some Animals
TC Tolbert, Gephyromania
Jordan Windholz, Ruminant
Semifinalists for the 2009 Sawtooth Poetry Prize:
Bridgette Bates, The Outside Occasion
Geri Lynn Baumblatt, Atlas of a cul-de-sac
James Belflower, Friend of Mies Van der Rohe
Anne Blonstein, “and my smile will be yellow”
Geoff Bouvier, Glass Harmonica
Julie Phillips Brown, The Adjacent Possible
Lily Brown, Rust or Go Missing
Phil Cordelli, Composite Family
Biswamit Dwibedy, Hubble Gardener
Christopher Eaton, Drone Meadow
Lucas Farrell, The Many Woods of Grief
Sara Femenella, Hazard
Robert Fernandez, Palmettos
Sandy Florian, well, well
Kokoy Guevara, equivocal flesh in the key of
Aby Kaupang, little “g” god grows tired of me
Jake kennedy, Book of Things
C.J. Martin, Maquettes for Monumental
Kate Schapira, The Bounty: Four Addresses
Rob Schlegel, American Bloom
Rob Schlegel, Wrack Line
Cassandra Smith, being when wendy, or a book in chapters
A.E. Watkins, Exhibit Kansas
Cori A. Winrock, Anti-Portrait at Flashpoint
Thank you to all who entered.