University of Arkansas Press's New Poetry Prize and Two New Collections

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. - The University of Arkansas Press has established a new poetry prize to honor the Press's co-founder and first director, Miller Williams. The Miller Williams Poetry Prize is a $5,000 prize to be awarded to the best poetry manuscript submitted to the Press in September and October of 2008, for publication in 2010. In addition to publishing the finalist, three semi-finalists will also be published in 2010. All books will be published in the Press's long-time Poetry Series, edited by Enid Shomer. Four new books of poetry have been published every year as part of this series.

With the help of a benefit concert by Lucinda Williams held in Fayetteville and the university's Advancement Division, an endowment was established that provides the funds for the annual prize. Miller Williams was named the Press's first director in 1980. Over the years he published many outstanding poets in the Press's publishing program, including Billy Collins, Robert Mezey, R.S. Thomas, Philip Appleman, Frank Stanford, and John Ciardi. One of America's most respected poets, Williams is known to many as the poet who read a poem at Bill Clinton's 1997 presidential inauguration. The author of numerous collections of poetry, translations, and literary criticism, he continues to write and publish his poetry.

The $5,000 prize is one of the larger financial prizes for any poetry competition in the U.S. The Press hopes that the prize will increase the number of submissions for its competition as well as attract more established poets.

Two new collections have been published as part of the Poetry Series. James Allen Hall's Now You're the Enemy is the poet's first book. The poems explore the themes of loss, the intersection of grief and desire, and the ways in which history, art and politics shape the self. Hall says that the collection can be read as a young gay man's coming of age. Acclaimed poet Mary Doty says that Hall's poems are "psychically charged, nervy, both measured and fevered, compassionate and outrageous, and alive to the very core. A review in Library Journal describes them as "brilliant and brave." Hall is an assistant professor of English at Bethany College and is a recipient of an Academy of American Poets Prize and three Pushcart Prize nominations.

Rift, by Barbara Helfgott Hyett, is, in one sense, a personal explication of a long marriage and its betrayal. The second section of the collection is a stunning sequence of 14 poems that explore Bernini's famous sculpture, "Daphne and Apollo." Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Maxine Kumin says, "Helgott Hyett's poems about love, infidelity and the body in all its guises are tough, tender and juicy." And Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel says her poems "reflect both her anguish and her fervor; their warmth elevates the reader to spiritual heights."

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